Hi (Shapfer of ^nipriff en -Sbisforg 



The Protestant Episcopac 



OF THE 



^EVOLUTIONARY PATRIOTS. 



LOST AND RESTORED. 



\ 



§ gentennkl Suffering, 



^5~2- 



Rev. MASON GALLAGHER, 

Author of True Churchmanship Vindicated : The Primitive Eirenicon 
Revision a Duty and Necessity. 



I Have Somewhat Asrainst Thee Because Thon Hist Left Thy First Love. Remember Therefore 
From Whence Thou art Fallen, And Repent, And Do The First Works. . . . What 
The Spirit Saith Unto The Churches'." Revelation. II. 4, 5, 7. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

REFORMED EPISCOPAL ROOMS, 

931 ARCH STREET, 

1883. 



WHO ABE RESPONSIBLE FOR SCHISM ? WHAT THE BISHOPS SAY I 



" Bodies of confessions and articles do much hurt, by becoming instruments 
of separating and dividing communions, and making uncertain and unnecessary 
propositions a certain means of schism and disunion. Whether of the two is 
the greatest schismatic, he that makes unnecessary and inconvenient impo- 
sitions, or he that disobeys them, because he cannot without doing violence to 
his conscience, believe them? he that parts communion because he cannot, 
without sin, entertain it? or they that have made it necessary for him to sepa- 
rate, requiring such conditions which to no man are simply necessary, or to him 
in particular are sinful or impossible?" BISHOP TAYLOR. 

" A schism must needs be theirs Avhose the cause of it is. The woe runs 
full out of the mouth of Christ even against him that gives the offence, not 
against him that takes it. He makes the separation that gives the first 
cause of it, not he that makes a separation from a just cause proceeding." 

ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 

" When a Church requires unnecessary conditions of communion, then that 
Church must take on itself the charge of schism. Let men turn and wind 
themselves which way they will, by the very same arguments that any will 
prove separation from the Church of Rome to be lawful, because she requires 
unlawful things or conditions of her communion, it will be proved lawful not 
to conform to any suspected or unlawful practise required by any Church 
government upon the same terms, if the tiling so required be, by a serious and 
sober inquiry, judged unwarrantable by a man's own conscience." 

BISHOP STILINGFLEET. 

" The transforming of indifferent opinions into necessary articles of faith 
hath been the insana laurus, or cursed bay tree, the cause of all our brawling 
and contention." ARCHBISHOP BRAMHALL. 

" Schism is by none more loudly reprobated than by those who are not only 
the immediate authors of schism, but the advocates of principles tending to 
generate and perpetuate schisms without end." 

ARCHBISHOP WHATELEY. 

" The ruling party is always liberal in bestowing the title of schismatics and 
heretics on those who differ from them in matters of religion, and representing 
them as dangerous to the State. The contrary is the truth. Those who are 
uppermost and have the power are the men who do the mischief; the schis- 
matics only suffer and complain, and are often thought worthy of punishment 
for that reason. BISHOP SHIPLEY. 

" The stipulations which are made in Baptism as well as in Ordination, do 
only bind a man to the Christian faith, or to the faithful dispensing of that 
Gospel, and of those Sacraments of which he is made a minister; so lie. who. 
being convinced of the errors and corruptions of a Church, departs from them, 
and goes on in the purity or the Christian Religion, does pursue the true effect 
of his Baptism and his Ordination vows." 

BISHOP BURNET on Art. xix. 



^f (Shapier of ^nwriff en -Sbisforg. 



The Protestant Episcopacy 



OF THE 



Revolutionary Patriots. 

LOST AND RESTORED. 



ieitiefmift.1 fffftnH§, 



jb^t 



Rev. MASON GALLAGHER, 

Author of True Churchmanship Vindicated : The Primitive Eirenicon 
Revision a Duty and Necessity. 



I Have Somewhat Against Thee Because Thou Hast Left Thy First Love. Remember Therefore 
From Whence Thou art Fallen, And Repent, And Do The First Works. . . . What 
The Spirit Saith Unto The Churches." Revelation, II. 4, 5, 7. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

REFORMED EPISCOPAL ROOMS, 

931 ARCH STREET, 

1883. 






" To you it cannot be necessary to observe, that High Church 
doctrines are not accommodated to the state of society, nor 
to the tolerant principles, nor to the ardent love of liberty 
which prevail in our country. 

It is w.ell known that our Church was formed after the 
Revolution, with an eye to what was then believed to be the 
simplicity of the Gospel ; and there appears to be some reason 
to regret that the motives which then governed have since 
been less operative." 

—Address of John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States, 
to the Corporation of Trinity Church, New York. 

% 1 fr : 



PREFACE. 



The present work, to which the notes are attached, is a portion of an address 
delivered on the Ninth Anniversary of the Organization of the Reformed 
Episcopal Church, to the R. E. congregation, of Boston, on December 3d, 1882. 

After a membership of over thirty years in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
and over ten years instruction in its seminaries, the author was ignorant of 
some of the important facts presented in this treatise. If his instructors were 
cognizant of them they kept the knowledge to themselves. Since his connection 
with the Reformed Episcopal Church he has been privileged to become acquainted 
with transactions of such great interest and importance. Of greater interest, 
inasmuch as the organization of the Reformed Episcopal Church is thereby 
more fully vindicated. Interesting facts connected with the subject have been 
omitted for want of space. 

There is one point of peculiar interest not dwelt upon in the notes, which we 
are unwilling entirely to pass over. The position and action of John Jay, the 
illustrious Chief Justice of our Nation, has been described ; we rejoice to know 
that Washington held similar views, and was a truly Reformed Episcopalian, 
in full accord with Mr. Jay. The spirit of Christian charity and unity in both 
was pre-eminent. All may contemplate and imitate them with profit. 

We read that "Mr. Jay finding, on his removal to Bedford, no Episcopal 
church in the vicinity, constantly attended one belonging to the Presbyterians: 
nor did he scruple to unite with his fellow Christians of that persuasion in 
commemorating the passion of their common Lord." Life I, 434. 

When Washington was encamped with his army at Morristown, he sent a 
note to Rev. Dr. Johns, the Presbyterian pastor, inquiring whether he would be 
welcome to partake of the semi-annual Communion in his church on the 
following Lord's day. He stated that he was a member of the Church of 
England, but was without exclusive partialities as a Christian. He accepted a 
cordial invitation, and received with his fellow Christians of other names, the 
memorial of the dying love of their common Lord. Sparks' Washington, p. 524. 
Appendix to McGuire's Religious Opinions of Washington. 

The difference in sentiment on this important topic is also manifest in his reply 
to the address of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
August 1789. " On this occasion," he writes, " it would ill become me to conceal 
the joy I have felt in perceiving the fraternal affection, which appears to 
increase every day among the friends of genuine religion. It affords edifying 
prospects indeed, to see Christians of different denominations, dwell together in 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

more charity and conduct themselves with respect to each other, with a more 
Christian-like spirit than ever they have done in any former age, or in any other 
nation. George Washington." 

When one considers the offensiveness of language and action which unfor- 
tunately so largely characterizes the Protestant Episcopal Church, with respect 
to fellowship with the greater bodies of Evangelical Christians around them, it 
is refreshing to contemplate the spirit and action of these two greatest and 
grandest of American Episcopal laymen. Eeformed Episcopalians point their 
puny objectors to their example, and pray that they may have grace to follow 
in the steps of these noble Christian forefathers, who have left such a precious 
legacy. 

In uncovering these half-buried facts of Kevolutionary Church history, while 
it has been pleasant to describe the noble Christian deeds of the Revolutionary 
Fathers ; it has not been so agreeable to narrate the causes which have led to 
the unhappy condition of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and to the disastrous 
events which followed its radical and indefensible change of base. 

It has been necessary in presenting Historic Truth, to strip from some noted 
names of the past, somewhat of the admiration which has been bestowed upon 
them, but which has not been their rightful due. 

Of those who, on the other hand, have deserved higher honor from posterity, 
the facts we have presented have rightfully vindicated the reputation. 

Where unsound doctrines and erroneous practices have been sustained and 
defended, through the influence of a name which has carried a weight to which 
it was not entitled, the interests of Gospel truth, and of souls, justifies a full 
presentation of the facts in the case. 

And when individuals have suffered from obloquy and misrepresentation; 
where there has been a loss of much that was dear to them, as in the case of Bishop 
Cummins and his friends, surely it was, in view of the verdict of posterity, 
an imperative duty, to establish beyond contradiction, that the separation from 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the restoration of the Old Revolutionary 
Episcopal Church, by the organization of the Reformed Episcopal Church ; is 
fully vindicated, and was clearly the work of the Spirit of Truth. 

The author has written with the deeper interest from the fact, that for a 
while he was beguiled by the seductive influence of the exclusive, sacerdotal 
system, and the Divine Right delusion. He knows by personal experience its 
effect upon the mind. He has also had extensive opportunity of witnessing its 
pernicious effect upon others. 

He is painfully aware of the immense difficulty of impressing by means of 
facts and logic, minds that have been narrowed and warped by a slavish submis- 
sion to authority and tradition. May the Lord greatly bless to those thus 
affected, the truth here presented in all kindness and love ! 

M. G. 
Brooklyn, K. Y. 

July 4, 1883. 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

DELIVERED IN BOSTON, DECEMBER 3d, 1882. 



BY REV. MASON GALLAGHER. 



I take great pleasure to-night, on this the ninth anniversary celebration of 
the organization of the Reformed Episcopal Church, in meeting with our 
brethren and friends in this old historic city, to which fled as a refuge, two 
centuries and a half ago, multitudes of brave spirits, who abandoned the old 
Mother Church of England, for causes similar to those which led ministers 
and members of the same Communion, planted in this country, to forsake 
their ecclesiastical home, and to reorganize, on December 2d, 1873, the same 
Church, with its exclusive priestly hierarchy, curbed and reduced; and its 
liturgy, deteriorated and defaced by the followers of Archbishop Laud, puri- 
fied and scripturally revised. 

I am reminded, too, by grand historic monuments, that the struggle here 
commenced for civil liberty, which issued in the establishment of a nation of 
freemen, who form the beacon-light to all the downtrodden and oppressed 
people of the wor ] d ; and whose moral influence in behalf of all that is desir- 
able in national life, far excels in the aggregate, that of any people upon whom 
the sun has shone. This is not a mere idle boast, for by every sincere advo- 
cate of civil and religious liberty, America is admired, respected and loved, in 
a measure greater than has fallen to the lot of any nation of the past. And 
all this notwithstanding the many confessed imperfections of a young Com- 
monwealth working out new and untried principles of government. 

As an American, the descendant of an Englishman who struggled and suf- 
fered on this very ground in securing these transcendent blessings, I claim a 
right here, on this spot, to recall the scenes, and the Crisis with which this 
city is so grandly associated; an era, the most important since the Reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century. 

REFORMED EPISCOPAL SYMPATHY WITH ENGLISH EXILES. 

"We of the Reformed Episcopal Church, are in the closest sympathy with 
those exiles from the tyranny of Laud, the father of our modern Ritualism,' 
which has compelled us in like manner to forsake the Church of our affec- 
tions, when corrupted by the same novel, unscriptural devices. We are in 



2 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

sympathy, also, with the brave men, their descendants, who then dared, in 
weakness, to defy a mighty oppressor, and blessed by Providence, have secured 
on these shores, forever, freedom from tyrants in Church and State. 

Little thanks to the ministry of the Church of Laud and his successors, for 
those results, and for the blessings which we now enjoy! 

That ministry, almost to a man, took part with the enemies of the Revolu- 
tion. The doctrine of the Divine right of Bishops, was first allowed among 
professed Protestants, by King James I, in return for the acknowledgment by 
Bancroft, Laud, and others, of the Divine right of Kings. Both claims are in 
their intrinsic character, the inherent and essential antagonists of the Divine 
rights of the people. 

They have no legitimate sympathy with the principles and results of the 
American Revolution. They must be watched wherever they are embraced, 
and carried out in action; whether in the Church of Rome, or in any other 
Hierarchical organization. 

THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE RIGHT DANGEROUS. 

The bond which links together the ministers and members of the same 
ecclesiastical organization which has embraced this unreasonable and 
unscriptural doctrine, of the exclusive divine right of an order of avowed 
priests, with sole power to convey spiritual gifts relating to the future 
eternal state, is closer far than that which binds a man to the civil state. 
It is of an undefined, mysterious nature, breeds superstition, discourages 
independence of thought, and is the natural foe of free institutions, however 
it may disguise itself. Fully developed in the Church of Rome, it is the ob- 
ject of anxiety and constant vigilance on the part of the governments of the 
old world, and in this land forms the source of the greatest danger to our lib- 
erties. Any institution among us, which born out of this Papal Corporation, 
has retained its leading features; an absolving priesthood, and the exclusive 
Divine right of Bishops, with the denial of a ministry and sacraments to 
other Protestant Churches, must necessarily remain a sect with limited num- 
bers and influence, spurned by Rome, and the object of distrust to the Com- 
munions with whom it arrogantly refuses fellowship. 

ITS BANEFUL INFLUENCES. 

The religious strife and separations it occasions in households where 
Christian unity should be especially nurtured; the false views of Chris- 
tian truth it necessarily engenders ; the disrespect it casts upon the 
work of the Holy Spirit through the agency of devoted and successful 
Christian teachers, whose position and office it asperses and contemns, 
while ascribing unreasonable and false prerogatives and gifts to men 
often vastly inferior in mental and moral qualities; are enough to impel 
men whose religion is based upon the Word of God alone, to reject and 
oppose this parasite of Protestantism, the creation of the Stuarts, and of 
Archbishop Laud. Its proper home is in a monarchical country. In cornmu- 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 3 

nities where a social and ecclesiastical Caste is allowed, based on something 
besides brains, character, or learning, it may nourish; but in a land where the 
Divine right of Kings has been spurned and rejected, the Divine right of 
Bishops, with its offensive and dangerous adjuncts, has no legitimate place; 
and as an American citizen, and a sincere, loyal Protestant, I honestly and 
openly resist it. 

THE LAUDEAN BISHOPS THE CAUSE OF THE PURITAN EXODUS. 

In divine Providence, we owe to the tyranny of Laud and the Stuarts, the 
freedom and the independence which now we so greatly enjoy. 

If the noble men whom these tyrants subjected to prison, to fine, to mutila- 
tion, and other forms of persecution, even to death, had not been driven from 
the mother country, and their ecclesiastical home, never would there have 
been reared in this land, a people willing and able to fight for seven years, as 
the descendants of the Pilgrims did, for the privileges of civil and religious 
liberty, which, thanks to God and to these patriots, we are privileged now to 
possess. 

In an able article on "The Causes which drove the Puritans from England," 
the JVeio Englander for November, 1882, says: 

"It was the bishops who drove the Puritans into Holland; it was the bishops 
who hung the sword of Damocles over them as they sailed to Plymouth; it 
was the bishops who compelled the founding of New England, and the great 
Puritan exodus. 

"When fifty years afterwards Archbishop Tillotson and other bishops of 
England expressed with such energy to Increase Mather, their just resentment 
to the injury which had been done to the first planters of New England, the 
old Puritan exclaimed: l If such had been the bishops there had never been a 
New England.' " 

We may with equal justice remark; "If the Protestant Episcopal Church 
had possessed such bishops as Tillotson, Burnet, 'Stillingfleet, Tennison, Patrick, 
and their associates, Bishop Cummins and his friends would not have been 
compelled to sever their ecclesiastical ties, and to organize the Reformed 
Episcopal Church. 

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE NON-EPISCOPAL CLERGY. 

The same spirit which led the Puritans, under Elizabeth and James, to 
struggle and suffer for freedom of conscience, and for the unadulterated 
truths of Holy Scripture, animated the Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch, 
and Lutheran pastors of the Revolution, and were it not for their incessant, 
stirring, patriotic appeals from the pulpit and the rostrum, and their presence 
in the army, where they both fought and prayed, I feel assured that the War 
of Independence would never have issued in the success of the Colonists. I 
am aware that there were noble exceptions to the course of the Trotestant 
Episcopal Clergy in espousing the cause of the mother country. The names 
•of Bishops Wnite and Provoost, Dr. William Smith of Philadelphia, 



4 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

Peter Muhlenberg, and Dr. Griffith, (Bishop-elect) of Virginia, and Robert 
Smith of South Carolina, afterwards a bishop, were foremost among those who 
empathized with the struggles of the patriot army; while Bishop Seabury of 
Connecticut, and his disloyal friends were exiled or imprisoned for giving aid 
and comfort to the oppressors of our grandsires. 

THE PRAYER BOOK OF 1785 THE WORK OF THE PATRIOTS OF THE REVO- 
LUTION. 

But it is eminently fitting for us Reformed Episcopalians to remember, 
and for me, on this anniversary occasion, to remind you, in this city of Revo- 
lutionary fame, that Bishops White and Provoost, with Dr. Wm. Smith, and 
Dr. Griffiths, were among the framers of the Prayer Book of 1785, (a Book 
associated with the names of William III., and his galaxy of Reforming 
bishops,) on whose principles this country first received its Episcopacy, and on 
which our Communion, the true, legitimate, Protestant Episcopal Church is 
based; while Bishop Seabury, a non-juror in principle and orders, and a 
pensioner of the British Government till his death, has impressed his principles 
of Episcopal and Sacerdotal exclusiveness, and of Sacramental, mechanical 
grace, upon the Liturgy and Rites of the Church we have been forced to 
abandon. 

That there is a noble body of sound and intelligent Christian men still re- 
maining in that Church, we well know; but that they are tolerated, and that 
they have received fair and courteous treatment in Conventions, of late, and 
only within a brief period, is owing to the fact that there is with us, for them 
at all times, a welcome, safe, and peaceful haven and retreat from their incon- 
sistent and uncomfortable alliance with men in whose principles they have no 
confidence, and with whose measures they have no sympathy. Sooner or later 
the separation of these antagonistic elements must occur. We rejoice that 
the main work has been accomplished, and though the inauguration of the 
first pure, Liturgical, Episcopal Reformation occasioned the early demise of 
our beloved leader, who had the grace and courage to effect it, it is done for 
all time; to the glory of God, in the spread of the truth, and to the great com- 
fort and joy of many of the Lord's children. 

THE PATRIOTIC OPPOSITION TO HIGH CHURCH EPISCOPACY, AND ESPE- 
CIALLY TO BISHOP SEABURY. 

It is well known that the fear of the Establishment of an Episcopal Hier- 
archy on these shores, was one of the causes which led the Colonists to desire 
separation from the mother country. The inherent nature of this intolerant 
system was thoroughly appreciated by the descendants of those who had so 
greatly suffered by it. 

The diocese of South Carolina united with the other dioceses on the con- 
dition that no bishop should be placed over them. It afterwards elected 
Robert Smith, who had served as private in the siege of Charleston. 

The conventions of Virginia were at first presided over by a layman. 

It is well known, also, that John Jay and James Duane, with Provoost and 
others, earnestly endeavored to prevent all ecclesiastical connection with 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 5 

Bishop Seabury after the Revolution. But these wise patriots were over- 
powered by the insane passion for uniformity, and a hollow, unscriptural 
unity, which has been the bane of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

The Seabury leaven of Sacerdotalism, exclusive Divine right and sacramen- 
tal grace, was allowed admittance. The Prayer Book of 1785 was essentially 
changed. The Romish alterations of Elizabeth and Charles were reintro- 
duced. The leaven has spread through the lump, and most significantly, 
though White survived Seabury a generation, the latter has thoroughly sup- 
planted the patriotic Low Churchman, as the acknowledged Father of that 
Church, among those who control and direct its affairs, and wield predomi- 
nating influence therein. 

It is, moreover, worthy of note, that in the city where the patriotic White 
and Smith labored, our Church has been most kindly welcomed, and has 
widely flourished; while in the metropolis where the principles of Seabury and 
his followers have long had predominating influence, the soil has been unfav- 
orable and uncongenial to the spread of a legitimate, Reformed Episcopacy. 
That in this community, so long favored by the influence ot the Apostolic 
Griswold, there is a future of great prosperity to our Communion, there is 
ample reason for most encouraging hope. 

By a singular coincidence, the grandson and namesake of Bishop Seabury, 
an honest, able and learned sacerdotalist, more than any other man, impressed 
the principles of Laud and the non-jurors upon the minds of his generation, 
as those principles have been revived and powerfully set forth by Newman, 
Pusey, and other writers of the Oxford Tracts. At the time the writer was a 
student at the General Theological Seminary in New York; the friend and 
biographer of Bishop White; and the most able and voluminous commentator 
on the Scriptures which his Church has produced, were the Senior Professors. 
But they were powerless to resist the overflowing tide of the Oxford delusion 
under its able American champion. Four of the writer's classmates, with 
other students, joined the Church of Rome. The money donated by departed 
benefactors for the education of youth in Protestant principles, has been there 
largely diverted in the sending forth religious teachers, the open opponents 
and aspersers of the doctrines of the English Martyr?. 

In like manner the munificent bequest of a member of the Protestant 
Reformed Dutch Church has been perverted, in the same city, to the open, 
public propagation of semi-Romish doctrines, which would have been most 
offensive and abhorrent to the benevolent departed donor. 

Such sad perversions of religious trusts must necessarily check bequests on 
the part of Protestant Episcopalians, ior they know not but that their 
legacies may be used in the process of instilling the most unscriptural views 
in the minds of their descendants, and in the sanctuaries where they have 
themselves worshiped. 

TRUTH NECESSARY FOR UNITY THE DOCTRINE OF THE REFORMERS. 

This system blossomed into Ritualism, allowed and extensively embraced in 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, resisting all efforts to suppress or eject it, 



*> ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

has compelled us, as true Protestants, holding the doctrines of the British 
Reformers, to come out and sever our connection with a religious Body thus 
proved powerless to oppose error. 

At much cost, but with the approbation of: conscience, and fidelity to the 
Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, here we stand. We 
could not do otherwise. We commit the matter to Him who has led us. "If 
this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught; but if it be of 
God, ye can not overthrow it." 

That the principles of the English Martyred Reformers were in entire an- 
tagonism to those which have pervaded the Protestant Episcopal Church with 
respect to the comparative importance of unity and sound doctrine, is clear. 
Said Latimer to Ridley: "Hilary saith, 'The name of peace is beautiful, and 
the opinion o£ unity is fair; but who doubteth that to be the true and only 
peace of the Church which is Christ?' St, Paul, when he requireth unity, he 
joineth straightwithal 'according to Jesus Christ,' no further. Diotrephes, 
now of late, did ever harp upon Unity, Unity. 'Yea,' quoth I, 'but in verity, 
not in Popery. Better is a diversity than a unity in Popery.' " Ridley testi- 
fies: "As for unity, the truth is, before God I do believe it and embrace it, so 
it be with verity, and joined to our Head, Christ, and such one as Paul 
speaketh of saying, 'one faith, one God, one baptism.' " 

John Bradford, of equal fame, writes: "The Word alloweth not the more 
part, but the better part. It alloweth not unity except it be in verity. It 
alloweth no obedience to any which can not be done without disobedience to 
God." 

Such views are altogether antagonistic to the course of a Communion which 
allows the views of Colenso at the one extreme, and those of Pusey at the 
other, and all views intermediate, to re-echo from her pulpits; while those 
who hold to the plain doctrines asserted by these martyrs, are held in light 
estimation, and for years have been barely tolerated. 

THE REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH UTTERLY REJECTS THE DOCTRINE 
OF EPISCOPAL DIVINE RIGHT. 

Our Reformed Episcopal Cnurch has utterly abandoned and cast out this 
excrescence on the Church of an Episcopacy of exclusive Divine Right, which 
logically developed into the Papacy, produced there the Inquisition and other 
abominations, and which, nurtured in the Church of England, exiled the 
Puritans; drove out of their pulpits two thousand able, devoted, conscientious 
ministers; persecuted the Methodists, and compelled them to organize that 
great and successful Communion which now outnumbers the Church they 
were forced to leave, and has a far brighter prospect for the future. Here 
reproduced in this land, the same Episcopal Communion has cultivated 
Church exclusiveness; suppressed all attempts at simple scriptural reform; 
discouraged sympathy and union with Protestant Churches; recognized the 
ministry of Home, while utterly ignoring that of the Reformed Communions; 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 7 

favored a return to Pre-reformation principles, and after imperiously and 
flatly rejecting the petitions of numbers of its most intelligent, devout and 
respected adherents to returu to its original principles, compelled them at last 
to sever their long and intimate Church ties, and go out, like Abraham, into a 
new home, followed by the deposing curse of their harsh, unsympathizing 
parent, but led by conscience and the Spirit of God into fairer pastures and by 
stiller waters. 

As one who has undergone this experience, after earnestly serving that 
Communion for twenty-seven years, I feel, dear brethren, a deep sympathy 
with the spirits of the past, who felt much as we have felt and suffered 
much as we have suffered. Truly, where our afflictions have abounded, our 
comforts and joys have much more abounded. Brethren, we have had our 
mission to accomplish, and I thank God heartily that He has counted us 
worthy thus to labor and suffer for the truth; to be exposed to obloquy and 
contempt; to encounter the sneer and the sarcasm of those with whom we were 
formerly associated. To belong to a religious institution in this age, where 
there is any self-denial demanded or persecution endured, is truly a mark of 
Divine favor; what are we that God should bless us so highly? I have con- 
sidered, when bishops claiming exclusive Divine right, have likened us to 
refugees in the Cave of Adullam, and when our noble leader was the object of 
calumny and vituperation, that the hunted chief of that band of outcasts was 
ike Lord's Anointed, and came forth in due time to claim and receive the 
crown of the nation? Let every Reformed Episcopalian look back on such 
scenes in the Church's history, take courage, be comforted, endure and 
march on to final, assured victory. 

DEPOSITION FROM THE MINISTRY FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE BORROWED 
FROM THE PAPAL COMMUNION. 

It is right here to affirm that those who established the Keformed Episcopal 
Church had faithfully served the Communion which they were forced to 
leave. In attainments and efficient work they were fully up to the average of 
their former associates, and candid men among the latter have publicly ac- 
knowledged the fact. The strange character of the religious organization here 
arraigned may be gathered from the fact that your speaker, after organizing 
three parishes, and building as many churches; and after having gathered the 
largest Sunday-school in his diocese, and presented the largest class for Con- 
firmation known in its history; unchanged in his doctrine, unassailed in repu- 
tation, was with his brethren publicly dewsed from the ministry. And for 
what cause? For simply doing what the Founder of Christianity and the Re- 
formers of Eugiand did: conscientiously seeking to purify and reform the 
Church which they loved and had faithfully served, appealing to the Word of 
God alone. They ceased to co-operate with those who, uncharitably and 
persistently, refused to effnct a scriptural reformation. In all these cases of 
unjust treatment the spirit was the same. Church organization and Church 



8 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

forms were apparently regarded as more important than conscientious scruples 
or adherence to God's Word. In none of these cases were the ecclesiastical 
censures approved and ratified in heaven; and it is sufficient compensation 
for the great trials incident to such conscientious acts, that Reformers now 
are in full sympathy with those who have preceeded them. For history and 
eternity will assuredly justify their action. We joyfully abide their verdict. 
But what of the position of those who, by ecclesiastical fellowship, counten- 
ance ecclesiastical oppressors in their unchristlike, uncharitable treatment of 
their brethren? Countenancing by organic connection those whose doctrines 
they repudiate as unscriptural, and by remaining in such relation, participants 
in the action by which men whom they acknowledge as preachers of a sound 
Gospel, are publicly stripped by a spiteful and inane enactment of their 
ministerial commission. 

No professed Protestant Communion but the Protestant Episcopal assumes 
to deprive of ministerial authority, those who depart from its ministry to 
other folds. 

It is one of the Roman Catholic peculiarities which this denomination has 
persistently retained. 

In marked Christian contrast to this presumptuous proceeding, Bishop 
Cummins dismissed a Protestant Episcopal minister who joined the Reformed 
Episcopal Church, when he returned to his former fold,with kind and court- 
eous words. The Church of England has wisely refrained from such deposi- 
tions. While such vindictive acts have no validity and are generally esteemed 
for what they are worth, they are to be regretted for their effect in increasing 
prejudice against the Gospel. 

The P. E. Church presumes to depose from the ministry of the Church of 
God, not simply from its exercise within their own bounds. I have known 
officials to seek to prejudice the minds of others against Bishop Cummins and 
his friends on the ground of their being deposed ministers. It is the fear of 
this impious and futile action which has prevented some timid minds from 
joining our Communion. 

BOSTON A GRAND FIELD FOR THE REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

I am not suprised at the advance of our Church in this city, under the ac- 
ceptable and faithful pastorate of our beloved brother. The seed was sown 
here by a wise and godly man. Brother Cutler laid the foundations deep and 
strong in faith and prayer, and he, who now as a wise master builder is 
continuing the work in this grand field, is enjoying the savor of the influence 
of that man of God whose unflinching testimony in behalf of this Church; whose 
severance, in his declining years, of his deeply rooted ecclesiastical ties; and 
whose treatment by that Communion, when refusal was extended to his 
funeral rites in the church edifice where he had officiated with the Divine 
blessing for a generation; preaches a sermon in behalf of the necessity of our 
work and our providential mission, more forcible and convincing than any 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 9 

words that I can utter. Strengthened by the sympathy and praye rs of so many 
devoted Christians of all names, with the enjoyment of the Divine blessing, this 
Church will surely advance to its completion, and ere long the top stone will 
be laid with shoutings of " grace, grace unto it." 



THE MYSTERIES AND MISERIES OF PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL DEPOSITION. 

Note.— "When the bishop, according to the Canon, has authoritatively erased 
the name of a clergyman from the list in the presence of witnesses, and thus 
officially deposed him, as far as his Communion possesses the power, from the 
ministry of the Church of God, information is forwarded to every other bishop 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

The Canon reads, XXXIX, 1832: "When any minister is degraded from the 
Holy Ministry, he is degraded therefrom entirely, and not from a higher to a 
lower order of the same. Deposition, displacing and all like expressions, are the 
same as degradation. No degraded minister shall be restored to the ministry. 

Whenever a clergyman shall be degraded, the bishop who pronounces sentence 
shall, without delay, give notice thereof to every minister and vestry in the 
diocese, and also to all the bishops of this Church, and where there is no bishop 
to the standing committee." 

It will be seen from the above Canon that the act of deposition is widely 
published. In addition, the transaction is announced in the bishop's annual 
address. 

It matters not whether the clergyman in his announcement of his determina- 
tion to withdraw from the Protestant Episcopal Church and ministry, at the 
same time states that he acts from conscientious reasons, and designs exercising 
his ministry in another communion ; the deposition is absolute. 

One bishop speaks of it : "as the inflicting of the irrevocable sentence of dis- 
placing or degradation from the ministry." 

The Canon appears to be framed with the design of preventing all such 
conscientious acts, by the stringency of its conditions and the fearful severity of 
its language. It necessarily acts with great power on the common timidity of 
the clerical mind, under Episcopal supervision. 

The writer when withdrawing from the Protestant Episcopal ministry in 1871, 
gave his reasons in full for his action, and his design to fulfill his ministry in a 
field outside of the Protestant Episcopal Connection. 

His bishop courteously requested him to give the matter a week's further con- 
sideration. But as he had patiently waited for years for that Communion to 
remove the burdens which had been weighing for a long period on many con- 
sciences, and the prospect of relief was entirely hopeless, the step was taken 
with the fullest deliberation, and the experience of twelve years has fully 
satisfied him that it was wisely done. 

"Recently, while looking at the Catalogue of the General Theological Seminary 
where he received his education for the ministry, the writer noticed among the 
names of the alumni, his own, with these words appended, "Deposed in New 
York 1871." Two of his class-mates, who joined the Church of Home, have the 
same addenda to their names, and two others of the alumni, one now a bishop of 
Rome, the other a Roman vice-chancellor. He noticed also two " deposed" 
alumni who had joined the Reformed Episcopal Communion, and whose career 
since their deposition, has been largely attended with the Divine blessing on their 
ministry. There is nothing to indicate to the reader for what cause the deposing 
curse was inflicted, whether for carrying out the Seminary teaching, logically, 



10 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 

and landing 1 in Rome; or for conscientious reasons joining a thoroughly Re- 
formed Communion ; or, for moral delinquencies. 

The commonest principles of justice and charity find do place in the case of 
any who leave the Protestant Episcopal ministry. That Communion acts upon 
the principle and with the spirit of the mother Church of Rome, from which it 
came out, and from whose medieval errors it has not yet freed itself. One wiio 
had abandoned the Protestant Episcopal ministry was asked the reason for his 
action, "Because," he said, " the conscience is not cultivated in that Commu- 
nion." This was a very severe charge, but entirely just with respect to the 
course of that Church in the matter of deposition. For it practically teaches 
that it is a greater offence to exercise ones ministry in another Communion, 
with a pure conscience, than to remain a Protestant Episcopal clergyman with 
that Divine monitor silenced with respect to errors of confessed magnitude. 
The inference too may be justly drawn fro in such ecclesiastical action that the 
call of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is of less importance, and 
of weaker obligation, than that of the Church "through its human officials. 

Thankful should we be that there is at last a Church which, while it is Litur- 
gical and Episcopal, is at the same time Scriptural, Charitable, Protestant and 
Free! 



Notes to Anniversary Address Delivered in the Be- 
formed Episcopal Church, Boston, December 3d, 1882. 

The Protestant Episcopacy of the 
Revolutionary Patriots. 



BY REV. MASON GALLAGHER. 



It has been seen from what has preceded that the 
circumstances attending the organization of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in 1785, were of deep 
interest from the character of the men who were en- 
gaged in the work. Their enterprise was hallowed by 
the savor of the Revolution in which they had taken a 
prominent part, and had greatly suffered. 

That their task was delicate and difficult all know. 
With few exceptions the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
land had taken an active part in behalf of the mother 
country. Most of them had been compelled to leave 
the country. The few who remained, protected by 
English bayonets, had written and preached, and 
prayed for the success of George III. Here and there 
was one who realized the nature of the struggle, and 
the vital principles of liberty and justice which were 
involved. These at the risk of an ignominious death, 
stood firmly with their ministerial brethren of other 
denominations, and largely aided in securing the grand 
result. 

And though the good work they effected in establish- 
ing their Church on free and broad and liberal prin- 
ciples, was overthrown by the admission in later years 
of the men who had labored to keep the colonists in a 
disgraceful submission to a tyrannical King and Par- 
liament, still it is our part as free, enlightened 
American citizens, and intelligent Christians, to honor 
their memory, and as Reformed Episcopalians, a cen- 
tury afterwards, to take up their work and to carry it 
forward to a successful and beneficial result. Claiming 
as we do, to hold their principles as opposed to those 
who sympathized with them, neither politically nor 

(11) 



VI NOTES. 

ecclesiastically; it is our part to recall the services they 
rendered as Christians and patriots. 

THE MOST PROMINENT ACTORS. 

The clergymen pre-eminent in the work were Dr. 
William Smith and Bishop. White of Philadelphia, 
Bishop Samuel Provoost of New York, Dr. David 
Griffith, Bishop elect of Virginia; Bishop Robert Smith 
of South Carolina; and Dr. Charles H. Wharton of 
Delaware. 

Among the Laity were James Duane and John Jay 
of New York; Richard Peters and Francis Hopkinson 
of Pennsylvania; John Page and Cyrus Griffin of 
Virginia; Charles Pinckney and John Rutledge of South 
Carolina. These are national and imperishable names. 

There were others of distinction: Edward Shippen 
and Thomas Hartley of Pennsylvania; David Brearley 
and John Rutherford of New Jersey; Jacob Reed and 
John Parker of South Carolina; Sykes of Delaware. 
These and other noble spirits were associated with the 
grand Revolutionary heroes I have enumerated, in 
organizing the Protestant Episcopal Church as a truly 
free, Scriptural, American Communion. 

PREDOMINANCE OF LAYMEN. 

It is eminently worthy of remark, that in the four 
primary Conventions in which Bishop Seabury was 
neither allowed presence nor influence, the lay element 
largely predominated. In all the suceeding Conventions 
the clergy were in the majority. 

In the First Convention, which settled the Prayer- 
Book of 1785, three-fifths of the body were laymen. In 
the Convention of 1789, which decided to admit Bishop 
Seabury, three-fifths of the number were clergymen. 
While the power of the laity was in the ascendent, the 
Church was Protestant and Scriptural in its services. 
As the Priestly influence became more general the 
Communion became naturally more sacerdotal, sacra- 
mental and exclusive. 

The Church thus, in its infancy, was identical with 
the Reformed Episcopal Church. Our Reformation is 
simply a Restoration; a return to the principles of the 
patriots of the Revolution. 

In like manner as the fathers of our Protestant Epis- 
copacy in America, severed their connection with the 



NOTES. 13 

mother country, when it departed from its Constitu- 
tional principles of Anglo-Saxon freedom; on similar 
grounds with equal right and justice, Bishop Cum- 
mins and his friends separated from the Protestant 
Episcopal Church when it went back on its founders 
and departed from its original free, Biblical, Constitu- 
tional principles. 

We have no doubt that as light is diffused within the 
P. E. Church, with respect to its own history, that 
American laymen who partake of the spirit of the 
American Revolution, will in time, decide favorably 
as to the claims of our Reformed Communion on their 
respect, affection and support. 

BISHOP WHITE. 

In a brief notice of the men who laid the foundations 
of American Protestant Episcopacy, Bishop White 
naturally claims prominent attention. To the cause of 
the colonists, Bishop White's attachment was intelli- 
gent and uncompromising. While his friend Rev. Dr. 
Duche, returned to his former allegiance, Bishop 
White was firm to the end. An incident which oc- 
curred illustrates the risk which clergymen who 
became revolutionists were aware they incurred. 

While Bishop White was taking the oath of alle- 
giance after the Declaration of Independence, an 
acquaintance made a significant motion of his hand at 
his throat. Said the Bishop to him afterwards: "I 
perceive by your gesture, that you thought I was ex- 
posing myself to great danger by the step I have taken. 
But I have not taken it without full deliberation. I 
know my danger and that it is the greater on account 
of being a clergyman of the Church of England. But 
I trust in Providence. The cause is a just one, and I 
trust will be protected." 

When appointed chaplain by Congress at the period 
of deepest gloom during the Revolution, he at once 
proceeded to Yorktown to discharge the duties of his 
office. When the British evacuated Philadelphia he 
was the only Protestant Episcopal clergyman who 
remained in the State. 

With regard to the organization of the P. E. Church 
he was connected with every step of the undertaking. 
He presided in the Convention of 1785, was Chairman 
of the Committee to publish the Prayer Book, was the 



14 NOTES. 

first to read it in public service; was consecrated Bishop 
February 4th, 1787, and preached the sermon at the 
Convention of 1786. 

BISHOP WHITE A LOW CHURCHMAN. 

Though Bishop White assented in 1789 to unite with 
Bishop Seabury and the New England clergy, his 
ecclesiastical principles were widely different from 
theirs. With regard to Episcopacy, he held the views 
set forth by the Reformed Episcopal Church. In his 
work entitled: "The Case of the Episcopal Church 
Considered," he writes : "The opinion that Episcopacy 
was the most ancient and eligible, but without any idea 
of Divine right in the case, this the author believes to be 
the sentiments of the great body of Episcopalians in 
America, in which respect they have in their favor, 
unquestionably, the sense of the Church of England, 
and as he believes, the opinions of her most distin- 
guished prelates for piety, virtue and abilities." 

His view was also moderate with regard to the Sacra- 
ments. When Bishop Seabury pressed the Scottish 
Oblation service upon the Convention Bishop White 
most unwisely yielded. In his memoirs, p. 187, he 
says : "That change lay very near the heart of Bishop 
Seabury. For himself, without conceiving with some, 
that the service as it stood, was essentially defective, 
he always thought there was a beauty in those ancient 
forms, and that there was no superstition in them. If 
indeed they could have been reasonably thought to 
imply, that a Christian minister is a priest, in the sense 
of an offerer of sacrifice, and that the table is an al- 
tar, and the elements a sacrifice, in any other than 
figurative senses, he would have zealously opposed the 
admission of such unevangelical sentiments as he con- 
ceives these to be." 

As Bishop White died just as the Oxford Tracts 
were beginning their work of un-Protestantizing the 
Church of England, he did not see the outcome of 
allowing such language in the Prayer-Book. This 
ardent Revolutionary patriot sympathized with the 
views of those who framed the Book of 1785, and 
though he allowed himself to be overcome and out- 
witted by the High Churchmen around him, had he 
lived to this day, he would have been an outspoken 
and earnest antagonist of those errors which have 



NOTES. 15 

occasioned the establishment of the Reformed Epis- 
copal Church. 

For what he suffered for his Country, for what he 
did for Christianity, let us honor him. That he failed 
to see the consequences of his concessions to the urgent 
and fiery spirits around him, was an error of his head, 
and not the fault of his loving, patient, conciliatory, 
pure and honest heart. 

PIIOVOST WILLIAM SMITH OF PHILADELPHIA. 

Dr. William Smith, Provost of the University of 
Pennsylvania, had as prominent a part in establishing 
the P. E. Church as Bishop White. As an accom- 
plished Theologian and a voluminous and eloquent 
writer he excelled all his associates. The Convention 
•of 1789, requested him to publish his sermons, and 
endorsed his sentiments. He was a member of the 
Conventions of 1785,-86,-89. When the service of the 
New Book was first read, Dr. Smith preached the 
sermon. He wrote the able preface to the Book. He 
presided in the House of Deputies from 1789 to 1799. 
He was Chairman of the Committee for revising the 
Liturgy. Bishop White styles him "the most promi- 
nent clergyman of his Church." 

His sermons in behalf of Colonial liberty were widely 
distributed throughout England. The Tory Governor 
Try on called the attention of the authorities to his trea- 
sonable utterances. The sublimely eloquent language 
in which he depicts the coming grandeur of America; 
his urgent charge to love, and union among all denomi- 
nations; his clear unfolding of the principles of civil and 
religious liberty; give great value and attractiveness 
to his discourses, which remain a rich legacy to the 
American people. 

In his first Convention address, Bishop Cummins 
quotes largely from the candid and valuable preface of 
the Prayer Book of 1785, composed by Dr. Smith, and 
also from the sermon by Dr. Smith on the occasion 
when it was first read by Bishop White. 

There is room but for one extract from his sermons. 
"How long, alas! how long shall the divided sentiments 
of Christians be a reproach to their name? How long 
Bhall circumstantials prevail over essentials? embitter- 
ing the followers of the lowly Jesus and inflaming their 
breasts with a madness even unto death. A sense of 



16 NOTES. 

this made the mild Melancthon, when he came to die. 
thank God that he was going to be removed from temp- 
tation to sin, and the fierce rage of religious zealots. 
Surely, my brethren, I will repeat it again. There is 
greater weight and moment of Christianity in charity, 
than in all the doubtful questions about which the 
Protestant Churches have been puzzling themselves 
and biting and devouring each other since the days of 
the Keformation. * * * It will not be so much a ques- 
tion at the last day of what Church we were, nor 
whether we were of Paul or Apollos, but whether we 
were of Christ Jesus and had the true mark of Chris- 
tianity in our lives. 1 ' Vol. II, pp. 63, 540. 

DR. CHARLES H. WHARTON. 

Dr. Charles H. Wharton was born in Maryland. 
Ordained aRoman Catholic priest, God opened his eyes, 
and he embraced the truths of the Bible. He ardently 
sympathized with the friends of American liberty. He 
combined great theological learning and wide scholar- 
ship with a poetic genius. His tribute' to General 
Washington is among the best poetic productions of 
the Revolution. 

Dr. Wharton was present and active in the Conven- 
tions of 1785, and of 1786. He was on the committee to 
publish the Prayer-Book with Bishop White and Dr. 
Smith. Bishop White says of him, "In all the impor- 
tant measures relative to the organization of the 
Church in this country, and especially in the Revision 
of the Liturgy, his learning, wisdom, and moderation 
were most effective and valuable." 

One sentence from his works will reveal his liberal, 
loving spirit. "In this country, where the Christian is 
the only established religion, where tests and subscrip- 
tions are unknown; where refined speculations are not 
likely to deform the simplicity or interrupt the harmo- 
ny of the Gospel, I look forward with rapture to that 
auspicious day, when Protestants opening their eyes 
upon their mutual agreement in all the essentials of 
belief, will forget past animosities, and cease to regard 
each other as of different Communions. "Vol. II, p. 361. 

DR. WHARTON'S VIEWS OF APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 

Dr. Wharton, like all the English Reformers, rejected 
the doctrine of an exclusive Episcopal succession. We 



NOTES. 17 

have had no divine in our Church more capable of 
judging of this question. A convert from Popery, he 
had given the subject full investigation. The learned 
Dr. Thomas Hart well Home says of him: "I have long 
had his masterly treaties in controversy with Dr. Car- 
roll, and value them among my choicest books against 
Popery." Dr. Wharton writes: "The pretence of trac- 
ing up the Roman Church to the times of the Apostles, 
is grounded on mere sophistry. The succession which 
Roman Catholics unfairly ascribe to their Church, be- 
longs to every other, and exclusively to none. But that 
portion of the Christian Church is surely best entitled 
to this claim, which teaches in the greatest purity, the 
doctrine of the Apostles. . . . 

They have not the inheritance of Peter {says St. Am- 
brose. lib. 1, depart.) who have not Peter's faith." Works, 
vol. 2, p. 313. 

A few lines from the poem alluded to will indicate 
the patriotism of this learned, liberal-minded framer of 
the Prayer Book of 1785, a true Reformed Episcopalian. 
In his introduction he says, "His sole view in penning 
this epistle was to express in the best manner he was 
able, the warm feelings of a grateful individual toward 
the best of men, to whom he, and every American, will, 
in all likelihood be principally indebted for the estab- 
lishment of the independence and commercial prosperity 
of his country." 

"While many a servile muse her succor tends 
To flatter tyrants, or a tyrant's friends, 
While thousands slaughtered at Ambition's shrine 
Are made a plea to court the tuneful nine; 
"While Whitehead* lifts his hero to the skies, 
Foretells his conquests twice a year, and lies; 
Damns half-starved rebels to eternal shame, 
Or paints them trembling at Brittania's name; 
Permit an humble bard, great Chief, to raise 
One truth-erected trophy to thy praise. 

Great without pomp, without ambition brave, 
Proud not to conquer fellow-men but save; 
Friend to the weak, to none a foe but those 
Who plan their greatness on their brethren's woes; 
Awed by no titles, faithless to no trust, 
Free without faction, obstinately just. 
Warned by Religion's pure and heavenly ray, 
That points to future bliss the certain way, — 
Such he my country! What her sons should be, 
•O, may they learn, Great Washington from thee!" 
* Poet Laureate. 



18 NOTES. 

THE REFORMED EPISCOPACY OF THE REVOLUTION- 
ARY PATRIOTS. 

The history of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
resembles in one respect, that of its mother Church of 
England. The first six years of the latter, were its 
purest and best years. 

The days of its glory, were those when King Edward 
was its earthly head, and when Cranmer, Latimer, Kid- 
ley and Hooper where engaged in the establishment of 
the Church and its formularies. 

The brightest period in the history of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church is that of its organization by White 
and Provoost, Smith and Wharton, and the framing by 
these divines, of its first and only Protestant Prayer 
Book, that of 1785. 

To a Reformed Episcopalian, the study of both these 
periods is an investigation of intense interest. He is 
in full sympathy with these good men, and their mea- 
sures. He becomes assured that the Communion to 
which he is attached, is the legitimate successor of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, which they, with the co- 
operation of other revolutionary patriots, so wisely es- 
tablished. 

The work of both these periods of Ecclesiastical con- 
struction, was perverted, respectively , by two individuals, 
of temperaments somewhat similar. I refer to Queen 
Elizabeth and Bishop Seabury. Both these characters 
were equally tenacious of their respective prerogatives, 
Royal and Episcopal. Both were firm believers in Di- 
vine Right ; the first in that of Kings, the other equally 
in that of Bishops. Both by a successful interference 
changed materially, and for the worse, the character of 
the Communions in which, respectively, they held the 
highest offices. Both greatly retarded the reforming 
work of their predecessors, and infused a Romish leaven 
into professedly Protestant Institutions, a leaven which 
neither Institution has been since able to expel. The 
growth and influence for good of both the Communions 
referred to, has been greatly and sadly retarded by the 
unhappy but successful interference of these earnest 
and strong willed characters. 

Of the men who took part in the organization of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and framed its first 
Prayer Book, I have briefly described three of the most 



NOTES. , 19 

prominent, Bishop White; Provost William Smith, of 
Philadelphia ; Dr. Charles H. Wharton, of Delaware; 
large minded, and liberal Churchmen, and earnest, 
loyal American Patriots. 

BISHOP SAMUEL PROVOOST. 

I proceed with the list of worthies whom the Ke- 
formed Episcopalians claim as their rightful ecclesias- 
tical predecessors. 

Samuel Provoost, first bishop of New York, for rea- 
sons which will appear as we proceed, has not received 
from his Church the reverential regard to which his 
memory is justly entitled. Dr. John W. Francis, in his 
"Old New York," p. 52, writes : "I introduce Bishop 
Provoost in this place, because I think our Episcopal 
brethren have too much overlooked the man, his learn- 
ing, his liberality and his patriotism." 

Kev. Dr. Schroeder, Minister of Trinity Church, in 
his memoir of Bishop Hobart, p. liii, writes : "Dr. Pro- 
voost was a man of cultivated mind and manners. His 
deep interest, and numerous acts of self denial, in pro- 
moting the good .cause of our civil liberties, and his 
prominent agency in organizing the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States, may well preserve his 
name and perpetuate his memory. The motto of his 
ancient family escutcheon pro libertate, declared at 
once the sentiments of his Huguenot forefathers, and 
the feelings which they had transmitted to him, through 
five generations, from the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury to the year 1742, when he was born at New York." 

The Evergreen, 1844, p. 199, says: "The character of 
Bishop Provoost is one which the enlightened Christian 
will estimate at no ordinary standard." 

A graduate of the first class which passed through 
King's (now Columbia) College, he spent five years in 
study at Cambridge, England, and was ordained Deacon 
and Presbyter in 1766. Eeturning to New York, he 
was at once chosen assistant minister of Trinity Church. 
He served the parish four years, when, on account of 
political troubles, his opinions being utterly antagonis- 
tic to those of his clerical associates, and the leading 
members of his parish, he resigned his position, and on 
a small farm in Duchess County, awaited the issue of 
the coining conflict. 



20 NOTES. 

THE MAGNANIMITY OF BISHOP PROVOOST. 

Dr. Schroeder remarks: "He resolutely refused all 
preferment that might be attributed to ] lis sentiments, 
saying: 'as I entertained political opinions diametri- 
cally opposite to those of my brethren, I was apprehen- 
sive that a profession of these opinions might he imputed 
to mercenary views, and an ungenerous desire to rise on 
their ruin.' He adds, 'To obviate any suspicion of this 
kind, I formed a resolution never to accept of any pre- 
ferment during the present contest. Although as a 
private person, I have been and shall be always ready 
to encounter any danger that may be involved in the 
defense of our invaluable rights and liberties.' " 

Harrassed by debts, necessarily incurred, without "a 
salary or income of any kind," his " estate at New 
York in the hands of the enemy," a "part of his furni- 
ture sold to provide the necessaries of life," and pre- 
vented by the Constitution of the State, and the Canons 
of the Church, from entering into any secular employ- 
ment: this patriotic clergyman spent his time in study, 
in deeds of quiet usefulness, and in earnest prayers for 
the success of Washington and his devoted army, and 
for the triumph of his country. 

He declined invitations to the leading churches in 
Boston and Charleston, and the chaplaincy of the Con- 
stitutional Convention of New York. 

When the cause of liberty had triumphed, and peace 
was declared, his sufferings were rewarded. The newly 
elected vestry of Trinity Church in whose hands the 
Council of New York had placed the estate of that 
corporation, under the influence of John Jay and 
James Duane, invited Dr. Provoost to the rectorate. 

HIS LEARNING AND INFLUENCE. 

No Episcopal clergyman stood higher in influence 
and position than Dr. Provoost. In accomplished 
scholarship, it may be safely asserted that no Ameri- 
can Bishop has surpassed him, and few have equalled 
him. In addition to his extensive Theological acquire- 
ments, he was an adept in various departments of learn- 
ing. Dr. Francis remarks : "He became skilled in the 
Hebrew, Greek, Latin. French, German and Italian 
languages, and we have been assured he made an Eng- 
lish poetical version of Tasso. He was quite a pro- 
ficient in Botanical knowledge, and was among the 



NOTES. 21 

earliest in England who studied the Linnean classifi- 
cation." 

Of his pulpit abilities, we may form an opinion from 
a contemporary journal, the New York Packet, of 
November 2nd, 1786, describing his farewell sermon on 
the eve of his departure to England to be consecrated: 
"The animated and pathetic manner in which Bishop 
Provoost addressed his hearers, who, as well as himself, 
appeared to be greatly affected, will be long remem- 
bered by those present." 

As regards the impression entertained of his offteial 
ministrations, the New York Journal, November 27th, 
1788, referring to the approaching General Convention, 
says: "It must afford satisfaction to the friends of 
Christ in general, and to every Episcopalian in particu- 
lar, to be informed that under the superintending care 
of Rt. Rev. Dr. Provoost, Bishop of this State, true 
religion is daily advanced, and more completely estab- 
lished in every part of his extensive diocese." 

With regard to his repute in England, a periodical in 
that country states: "Dr. Provoost is the most digni- 
fied clergyman, and rector of the most influential parish 
in America." See Historical collections, published by 
New York Historical Society, 1870. 

Elected bishop on the same day with Bishop White, 
he justly shares with that revered divine, the title of 
"Eather of the American Episcopal Church." 

Dr. Francis states, p. 168: "It has been more than 
once affirmed, and the declaration is in print, that 
Bishop Provoost as senior presbyter and senior in the 
ministry, was consecrated first, and Bishop White next, 
though in the same day and hour, February 4th, 1787. 
The son-in-law of Provoost, C. D. Colden, a man of 
veracity, assured me such was the case. If so, Pro- 
voost is to be recorded as the Father of the American 
Episcopate. It is painful to pluck a hair from the 
venerable head of the Apostolic White, but we are 
dealing with history." 

Although Bishop Provoost was fairly entitled to the 
precedence in the consecration, the preponderance of tes- 
timony on this point seems to be in favor of Bishop 
White, as Senior Prelate. 

The fact remains, however, that at the first consecra- 
tion of an American Bishop, Dr. Claggett, Bishop Pro- 
voost presided, and thus bears the pre-eminence, in the 



22 NOTES. 

matter of the continuance of the Episcopal succession 
in this country, and thus also became the father of 
American Protestant Episcopacy. 

It will hereafter be shown, that if the counsels of 
Bishop Provoost, and those who acted with him, had 
been followed, a far more successful and happy ex- 
perience would have attended the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in this country. 

A vastly greater constituency of that Communion, 
would be looking back with grateful memory to his 
faithful, wise and patriotic devotion, and his consistent 
adherence to the best interests of his Church. 

Bishop Provoost became the chaplain to Congress. 
At the Convention in 1785, he was chairman of the com- 
mittee which drafted and reported its " General Eccle- 
siastical Constitution." He took a prominent part in 
the revision of the Prayer Book on the basis of the re- 
forming bishops in the reign of William III, the prin- 
ciples of which are so fully and ably stated in the pre- 
face, by Provost Wm. Smith. 

A NON-JURING CHANGE OF BASE. 

The intelligent and patriotic churchmen of New 
York, adopted that Book and its principles, and in that 
metropolis it was used until 1789, when through the 
admission of the non-juring element into the General 
Convention, and the weak and sad concessions of its 
members, the noble, Scriptural, Protestant work of the 
past years was discarded, the Scottish Concordat was. 
allowed to triumph, the sacramental and sacerdotal 
principles were restored in greater fullness, and a legacy 
of error, dissension and comparative failure in growth 
and influence was the result. 

From this Convention Bishop Provoost was absent 
through sickness. Neither Jay, nor Duane, nor Peters, 
neither Page nor Pinckney, the first revisers, were pres- 
ent, to oppose the sacrilegious re-action. That earnest 
opposition would have been made by these clear-headed, 
consistent reformers, to such radical, perverse changes, 
if present, we must believe, and much of the deteriora- 
tion would have been prevented. Attention will be here- 
after called to the changes that were effected. 

In 1788, Bishop Provoost consecrated Trinity Church, 
New York City. On that occasion, John Jay and James 
Duane were wardens. In addition to these eminent pa~ 



NOTES. 23 

in that congregation, a noble 
band. Hamilton, Robert R. and Walter Livingston, 
John Alsop, Rufus King, William Duer, John Ruth- 
ford, Marinus Willett and Morgan Lewis, were among- 
the stated attendants at that Reformed Service, under 
the instructions of the patriotic Bishop. 

A NOBLE EXAMPLE OF REFORMED EPISCOPACY. 

Two years later, that same edifice presented a solemn 
scene at the funeral of Theoderick Bland, a member of 
Congress and soldier of the Revolution. Washington 
and the Congress were present. James Madison and 
Richard Henry Lee were among the pall bearers. Bishop 
Provoost enters the desk and reads the service, and 
when this is concluded, what venerable clergyman 
ascends the pulpit to pronounce the funeral oration? It 
is Dr. William Linn, Pastor of the Protestant Reformed 
Dutch Church. 

Bishop Provoost like Cranmer of old, and like Bishop 
Hall at Dort, with the Episcopalians of his day, cheer- 
fully recognized the ministerial commission given by 
the sister church of that Denomination, whose edifices 
during the w T ar, had been converted by the royal offi- 
cers into prisons, hospitals and riding schools. 

In their principles and their action, ministers and 
people at that period were Reformed Episcopalians, and 
would have remained so were it not for the insidious 
and deteriorating influences of the re-actionary changes 
in the Book of Common Prayer. The savor of the 
Revolution had not yet been lost. 

We have not time to dwell on the future history of 
this patriotic, and truly Reformed Episcopalian. 

Saddened by the growing influence of the exclusive 
and sacramental element in his Communion, "and by 
many painful domestic and embarrassing official cares, " 
infirm in health, afflicted by the loss of his wife, and of 
his favorite son, and by the reckless course of another 
son, Bishop Provoost resigned his Episcopate in 1801. 

His active career was at a close. Ten years later, he 
Mas called from a bed of sickness, after a paralytic 
stroke, followed by jaundice, to assist at the consecra- 
tion of Bishops Griswold and Hobart. No other bishop 
could be obtained to complete the canonical number 
required. The Church had not prospered under the 
Seabury transformation, and it was feared that recourse 



24 NOTES. 

must be had to England for a renewed supply of the 
sacred, Apostolic, Episcopal Depositum, and a fresh 
start be made by the unfortunate Communion. 

He died in 1815. For twenty years he had not been 
in sympathy with the prevailing sentiments of his 
Communion, so antagonistic to the principles upon 
which, by Jay, and Duane, and Peters, and Griffith, 
and Robert Smith, and other patriotic churchmen, it 
had been originally founded. Near a century afterwards, 
it was graciously allotted to Bishop Cummins to revive 
the noble and beautiful work, which our patriotic 
fathers had so grandly inaugurated. Profiting by the 
sad experience of the past, may the Reformed Episco- 
pal Church carry on the same work with the divine 
blessing to a glorious and permanent consummation? 

In describing the clergymen of the Revolution who 
laid the foundation of the Protestant Ex>iscopal Church 
on its original, grand, scriptural, free, American princi- 
ples, we have called attention to three from the Northern 
States. Bishop White and Provost William Smith, 
of Pennsylvania; and Bishop Provoost, of New York. 
The fourth, Dr. Charles H. Wharton, at that time was 
a deputy from Delaware. The greater part of his min- 
istry, however, was exercised in New Jersey. 

Two others, prominent among the Revolutionary 
clergy in this work, so interesting to us Reformed Epis- 
copalians as fully sympathizing in their principles and 
acts, equally deserve a eulogy. 

DR. DAVID GRIFFITH, OF VIRGINIA. 

Dr. Griffith was born in New York City in 1742, the 
same year and place in which Bishop Provoost was 
born. He Avas married in New York in 1766. In the 
City of Philadelphia, at the house of Bishop White, he 
died, while attending the General Convention, August 
3rd, 1789. After practicing medicine a few years, he 
went to England, where he was ordained by the Bishop 
of London in 1770. In 1771, he became a pastor in 
London County, Virginia. In 1779, he became rector 
of Christ's Church, Alexandria, and remained such till 
his death. For ten years General Washington was his 
parishioner, as well as his intimate friend. 



NOTES. 25 

COLONIAL OPPOSITION TO BISHOPS. 

The State of Virginia strongly opposed the introduc- 
tion of bishops before the Revolution. It is not neces- 
sary here to relate how offensive the idea of Episcopal 
supervision was to the minds of the colonists generally. 
The hostility was not confined to New England. No- 
where was it more determined than in the colony of 
South Carolina. 

John Adams states: "Where is the man to be found 
at this day, when we see Methodistical Bishops, Bishops 
of the Church of England, and Bishops, Archbishops, 
and Jesuits of the Church of Rome with indifference, 
that the apprehension of Episcopacy contributed fifty 
years ago (1815), as much as any other cause, to arouse 
the attention, not only of the Virginia mind, but of the 
common people, and urge them to close thinking on the 
constitutional authority of Parliament over the colo- 
nies? This, nevertheless, was a fact as certain as any in 
the history of North America." Dr. Morse's Annals 
of the Am. Rev. pp. 197. 

The ministers of the synod of New York and Phila- 
delphia, held in concert with the consociated Churches 
of Connecticut, from 1766 to 1775, adopted resolutions 
with respect to this determined hostility to the introduc- 
tion of the English prelacy on these shores. Among 
the members we have the eminent names of John 
Witherspoon, Drs. Rodgers and Allison, McWhorter, 
Caldwell, Tennent, Mather, Bellamy and Brainerd. 

In one of their annual letters to their English Breth- 
ren, they remark: "The late attempts of the Episcopal 
clergy among us to introduce an American Episcopate, 
have given a general alarm to our Churches, who tied 
from the unmerciful reign and persecution of diocesan 
bishops in our mother country, to settle in an unculti- 
vated wilderness; the recollection of the cruelties and 
hardships which our fathers, before this peaceful re- 
treat was opened for them, fills our minds with an utter 
abhorrence of every species of ecclesiastical tyranny and 
persecution. 

"Besides all this, we can assure you that the Episco- 
pal Provinces of Maryland and Virginia do not appear 
to desire bishops among them; it is only the request of 
a few discontented missionaries in the Middle Colonies; 
the laity of their communion (a few high officers ex- 



26 NOTES. 

cepted), dread the power of a Bishop's Court as much 
as any other denomination, and have a high sense of 
liberty, civil and religious." See minutes of Conven- 
tion, republished 1843. 

The House of Burgesses in Virginia, composed ?Jmost 
entirely of Protestant Episcopalians, in 1771, by a unani- 
mous vote, thank four clergymen by name, "for the 
wise and well-timed opposition they have made to the 
pernicious projects of a few mistaken clergymen for in- 
troducing an American Bishop, a measure by which 
much disturbance, great anxiety and apprehension, 
would certainly take place among His Majesty's faith- 
ful American subjects; and that Mr. Richard Henry 
JLee and Mr. Bland do acquaint them therewith." 

The writer here quoted remarks: "The circumstances 
which we have just detailed, unfortunately produced a 
coldness between the Episcopalians of Virginia and 
those of the Northern Provinces." See Prot. Epis. 
Hist. Col. 1851, p. 156. 

James Madison in a letter 1774, testifies to the same 
predominant feeling: "If the Church of England had 
been the established and general religion in all the 
Northern Colonies, as it has been among us here, and 
uninterrupted harmony had prevailed throughout the 
Continent, it is clear to me that slavery and subjection 
might and would have been gradually insinuated 
among us." Elves' Life of Madison, vol. 1, p. 43. 

THE PATRIOTISM OF DR. GRIFFITH. 

Dr. Griffith preached before the house of Burgesses 
in stirring patriotic strains, and entered the army as 
chaplain, in 1776. His regiment was commanded by 
Col. Hugh Mercer, who fell mortally wounded at 
Princeton. 

Of Chaplain Griffith's army life we have an interest- 
ing incident narrated : "The evening before the battle 
of Monmouth found the army encamped on Mattapan 
Creek, near the Court House. Late at night a stranger 
suddenly appeared before Washington's quarters. He 
wore no uniform and was instantly challenged. He 
replied that he was Dr. Griffith, chaplain and surgeon 
in the Virginia line, on business of great importance to 
the Commander-in-chief. The officer of the General 
was called, but refused admittance. Washington's 
orders were peremptory; he was not to be seen on any 



NOTES. 27 

account. 'Go and say,' replied the visitor, 'that Dr. 
Griffith waits upon him with secret and important in- 
telligence, and craves an audience of only five min- 
utes.' The General ordered him to be admitted. En- 
tering the Chief's presence, Dr. Griffith said : 'The 
nature of my intelligence must be my apology for in- 
trusion upon you at this hour. I camiot divulge the 
names of my authorities, but I can assure you that they 
are Of the very first order, whether in point of charac- 
ter or attachment to the cause. I warn your Excel- 
lency against the conduct of Major General Lee, in 
to-morrow's battle.' So saying, he withdrew as sud- 
denly as he came." 

Lee's treachery in that battle, and Washington's ter- 
rific rebuke of him on the field, which was followed by 
Lee's withdrawal from the service, are well known. 
See Independent, Sept. 2, 1880, article by' Rev. Charles 
H. Woodman. Lossing's Hist. Am. Rev., II, p. 623, 
states that Hamilton and others were present. 

In May, 1785, at the First Convention in Richmond, 
"when thirty-five clergymen and sixty-five laymen met 
to consider the question of union as proposed to 
them," Dr. Griffith was appointed a delegate to the 
General Convention, which met at Philadelphia in the 
Autumn. At that meeting he took an active part in 
framing the Prayer Book of 1785. 

At the next Convention in Virginia, he was elected 
Bishop. 

THE LAITY OF VIRGINIA. 

Dr. Griffith represented an illustrious constituency. 
With reference to the Virginia laity, Rives, in his life 
of Madison, Vol. 1, p. 50, writes: "The vestrymen of 
that day, we shall find, were the Washingtons, the 
Lees, the Randolphs, the Masons, the Blands, the Pen- 
dletons, the Kelsons, the Nicholas', the Harrisons, the 
Pages, the Madisons, and other names far too numerous 
to re-capitulate in detail, which stand among the first 
on the role of our Revolutionary worthies. In these 
men, and such as these, were the effective and con- 
trolling powers of the Church, for the laity and not the 
clergy were the rulers here." 

So impoverished had the Church become by the War, 
that the money required for Dr. Griffith's journey to 
England was not raised by the year 1789, and Dr. G. 



28 NOTES. 

finally declined the appointment of Bishop. If 
Dr. Griffith had been consecrated with White and 
Provoost, and his life had been prolonged, for he died 
in his forty-ninth year, he would have been the first 
bishop, as first elected, and been the Father of the 
American Church. He might have been its Preserver. 

In the sermon preached at his funeral, before the 
General Convention by Provost Smith, he is thus .des- 
cribed: "In the service of his country, during our late 
contest for liberty and independence, he was near and 
dear to our illustrious Commander-in-chief. He was 
also his neighbor, and honored and cherished by him 
as a pastor and friend. When on the conclusion of the 
War, he returned to his pastoral charge, and our 
Church, in these States, in the course of Divine Provi- 
dence, were called to organize themselves as inde- 
pendent of all foreign authority, civic and ecclesiasti- 
cal, he was from the beginning elected the chief cleri- 
cal member to represent the churches of Virginia in 
our General Conventions, and highly estimable he was 
among us. Pie was a sound, noble divine; a true son, 
and afterwards a father as a bishop-elect of our Church, 
with his voice always, with his pen occasionally, sup- 
porting and maintaining her just rights, and yielding 
his constant and zealous aid in carrying on the great 
work for which we are assembled at this time, with 
Christian patience and fortitude, though at a distance 
from his family and his nearest relatives and friends, he 
sustained his short but severe illness. 1 ' 

The loss of such a man in that critical period, to his 
diocese and to his whole Communion was irreparable. 

The death of Dr. Griffith, and the admission of Bishop 
Seabury and his party, on conditions which radically 
changed the principles of the primary constitution, and 
the doctrine of the prayer book of 1785, appears to have 
discouraged the Protestant Episcopal Church in Vir- 
ginia. The work of its wisest men had been set aside. 

It is true a bishop was elected and consecrated in 
1790, Dr. James Madison. He attended but two Con- 
vention. His wise moderation was there unavailing. 

For twenty-five years, and for nine General Conven- 
tions, the Diocese of Virginia was represented by but 
two clergymen and by one layman, who had renounced 
the ministry. At four General Conventions no Virginia 
bishop, presbyter or layman was present. 



NOTES. *' 29 

None of her great laymen had a voice in the action 
which removed the Church from the foundations upon 
which Jay, Duane, Pinckney, Peters, Page, Ruttledge, 
Griffin and Shippen had so grandly established it. It 
was left to weak and unwise hands to mar the work 
which had been so nobly inaugurated. 

BISHOP MADISON OF VIRGINIA. 

Bishop Madison of Virginia was briefly alluded to in 
the last note. This good and learned man deserves a 
full consideration in this connection, as he was in full 
sympathy with the liberal American principles, which 
characterize the Reformed Episcopal Church, as dis- 
tinguished from the religious Body, which its founders 
were compelled to abandon. 

* THE LOYALIST CLERGY. 

To the anti-revolutionary principles, which were held 
by the loyalist clergy, through whose influence the con- 
stitution and Prayer Book of the original Protestant 
Episcopal Church were radically changed, we have the 
testimony of one of the most noted of that company; Rev. 
Dr. Thomas B. Chandler, rector of St. John's Church, 
Elizabeth, who retired to England at the beginning of 
the Revolution. In his "Appeal on behalf of the Church 
of England in America,' 5 Br. C. writes: "Episcopacy 
can never thrive in a republican government; nor re- 
publican principles in an Episcopal Church. For the 
same reasons, in a mixed monarchy, no form of eccle- 
siastical government can so exactly harmonize with the 
State, as that of a qualified Episcopacy, And as they 
are mutually adapted to each other, so they are mutually 
introductive of each other." 

THE WISDOM OF THE REVOLUTIONARY FATHERS. 

It was the avowal of such sentiments, and the obloquy 
occasioned by them, that led men like Jay and Duane, 
and Shippen and Page, and Pinckney, to cast aside the 
feudal principles of the mother Church, and to frame a 
constitution imbued with the spirit of the Revolu- 
tion, and therefore acceptable to a free people. 

THE HOSTILITY TO EFISCOPAOY. 

Bishop White states in his Memoir of Protestant 
Episcopal Church, page 48, that the opinion was gener- 



30 * NOTES. 

ally entertained, "that Episcopacy itself was unfriendly 
to the political principles of our Republican Govern- 
ment." 

Dr. Hawks in his work on the Constitution and 
Canons of the P. E. Church, remarks: "The effect of 
the American Revolution upon the Church, had been 
to attach to it no small share of odium, and few cared 
to enroll themselves among the clergy of a Communion, 
small in numbers, and the object also of popular dis- 
like." The reasons for this we have before presented^ 
and Mr. William B. Reed, an Episcopalian, in an ad- 
dress before the Pennsylvania Historical Society con- 
firms the statement. He says: "Patriotic clergymen of 
the Established Church were exceptions to general 
conduct. ... It is a sober judgment which cannot be 
questioned, that had independence and its maintenance 
depended on the approval clearly sanctioned of the Colo- 
nial Episcopal Clergy, misrule and oppression must 
have become far more intense before they would have 
seen a case of justifiable revolution." 

Had the P. E. Bishops and clergy generally been 
men of the moderation and wisdom of . Provoost, 
Griffith- and Madison, these prejudices would gradually 
have been removed, and the names of the patriotic 
heroes who had reformed the Church, and revised the 
Prayer Book for a free country, would have established 
general confidence, and the result would have been a 
powerful, numerous and widely influential communion. 

THE MODERATION OF BISHOP MADISON. 

Bishop Madison who had been elected President of 
William and Mary College at the age of 28, presided at 
the first Convention in Virginia, consisting of thirty- 
five clergymen and sixty-five laymen. Consecrated in 
1790— in the House of Bishops, he introduced a re- 
markable resolution which passed that Body. Bishops 
Provoost and White, probably voting for it. It ex- 
hibits the Catholic nature of the man, and was undoubt- 
edly an index to the principles of his Diocese, which 
has remained so generally faithful to the charitable 
and moderate^ views of its noble founders. 

HIS EFFORT TO PROMOTE CHRISTIAN UNION. 

"The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States of America ever bearing in mind the sacred 



NOTES.* 31 

obligations which attends all the followers of Christ, to 
avoid divisions among themselves; and anxious to pro- 
mote that union for which our Lord and Saviour so earn- 
estly prayed, do hereby declare to the Christian world, 
that uninfluenced by any other considerations than those 
of duty as Christians, and an earnest desire^or the pros- 
perity of pure Christianity, and the furtherance of our 
holy religion, they are ready and willing to unite and 
form one body with any religious society, which shall 
be influenced by the same Catholic spirit. 

"And in order that this Christian end may be the 
more easily effected, they further declare that all things 
in which the great essentials of Christianity and the 
characteristic principles of their Church are not con- 
cerned, they are willing to leave to future discussion; 
being ready to alter or modify those points, which in 
the opinion of the Protestant Episcopal Church, are 
subject to human alterations. And it is hereby recom- 
mended to the State Conventions to adopt such meas- 
ures or propose such Conferences with Christians of 
other denominations, as to themselves may be thought 
most prudent; and report accordingly to the ensuing 
General Convention." Bh. White's Mem. Prot. Epis. 
Ch., p., 168. Perry's Hist. Gen. Con., p. 80. 

Dr. Sprague in his Annals of Epis. Pulpit, p. 320, 
writes of Bishop Madison.- "At this period his heart 
seems to have been intensely fixed on uniting as far as 
possible, all sincere Christians. 'There is no one,' he 
says, 'but must cordially wish for such a union, pro- 
vided it did not require a sacrifice of those points which 
are deemed essentials by our Church; from them we 
Lave not power to retreat.' He introduced a proposi- 
tion to this effect in the General Convention held in 
New York in 1792; but it met with no favor, and was 
silently withdrawn." 

HIS CHARITABLE EFFORTS DEFEATED. 

The House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, which con- 
tained few of its original founders among the laity, 
and none of like eminence, appears to have felt the reac- 
tionary influence of the new regime. They rejected the 
proposition as "preposterous," and it was not permit- 
ted to be recorded in the journal. 

The same treatment has at times since been extended 
to the various petitions for relief, from burdens on the 



32 * NOTES. 

conscience, presented by numerous venerable and de- 
voted clergymen and laymen. 

Bishop Madison in the remaining twenty-three years 
of his life, attended but one more General Convention. 
He found the important educational field to which he 
had early devoted his deep and varied learning, more 
congenial.* He was the regularly officiating minister of 
the ancient church at Jamestown, five miles from his 
College, and on a salary of only one hundred pounds a 
year. 

BISHOP MADISON AS A PREACHER. 

With respect to his pulpit talent, President John 
Tyler, who had been his pupil, remarks: "Bishop 
Madison in the pulpit, was regarded in his day as 
strikingly eloquent; his style was copious and Cicero- 
nian, and his manner strikingly impressive. The deep 
tones of his voice and its silvery cadence were incom- 
parably fine. It has been my fortune to hear our first 
and most distinguished orators, as well in our public 
assemblies, as in the pulpit; but I recollect nothing to 
equal the voice of Bishop Madison." President Tyler 
continues in his letter to Dr. Sprague: "It was as 
President of William and Mary, that the chief est value 
of his life was exhibited. The hundreds who went ou; 
into the world, the light of his teaching, the great and 
exalted names which were given to fame by several of 
those, who under him became the disciples of Locke 
and Sidney, speak more loudly in his praise than any 
words I can utter and write. Well may his relative 
and namesake, James Madison, have said of him in the 
language quoted by you in your letter that, 'he was one 
of the most deserving men that ever lived.' I could 
have said no less of one, the memory of whose virtues 
is indelibly impressed upon my heart and mind — Exem- 
plar vitae morumque. As such I regarded him when 
living, and as such I cherish his memory, now that he 
is dead." Sprague's Annals, p. 323. 

As a specimen of the earnestness which characterized 
Bishop Madison's addresses to the clergy, Dr. Sprague 
gives the following extracts: "I do not think that I 
should discharge my duty in the manner which my 
conscience and my inclination dictate, were I not to 
speak upon this occasion with all that plainness and 
freedom which the importance of the subject demands. 



NOTES. 33 

I know that our Church is blessed with many truly 
pious and zealous pastors, — pastors from whose exam- 
ple the greatest advantage might be derived by all of 
us; but at the same time I fear that there is too much 
reason to apprehend that the great dereliction sustained 
by our Church has arisen, in no small degree, from the 
want of that fervent Christian zeal which such exam- 
ples ought more generally to have inspired. Had the 
sacred fire committed to our trust been everywhere at 
all times cherished by us with that watchful and 
jealous attention which so holy a deposit required; — 
had it been thus cherished, might not the ancient flame 
which once animated and enlightened the members of 
our Church, still have diffused its warmth ? * * * * 
What minister, what priest, what bishop is there, who 
will not, with pious awe, reflect most seriously upon 
the momentous charge committed unto him; and while 
he profoundly meditates upon the extent of his duties, 
ardently supplicate at the throne of grace the renewal 
of that fervent zeal without which the great ends of 
His ministry can never be accomplished." 

It is due to us Reformed Episcopalians, to give right- 
ful honor to this first bishop of Virginia, who like 
Provoost, was more eminent for learning and charity, 
than for ecclesiastical partizanship, and arrogant, 
sectarian exclusiveness. His fame, as his history is 
more fully known, as an eminent Christian scholar and 
educator, will shine like that of Arnold and Wayland, 
and Muhlenberg, with ever increasing lustre. 

THE ACTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

We enter upon an intensely interesting theme when 
we refer to South Carolina and her relation to the 
American Revolution. The names of her magnificent 
heroes Marion, Sumpter, Pickens, Moultrie, Laurens; 
of him who lead them on to final victory, Greene, the 
beloved and trusted of Washington; together with the 
Pickneys and the Rutledges, rise up before us to arouse 
our highest admiration for patriotism, valor, and virtue 
exhibited in their highest possible perfection. 

Arid when we state that Robert Smith, first bishop of 
South Carolina, served under these leaders as a private 
soldier, in the Siege of Charleston, and that the honored 
names of Pinckney and of Rutledge are associated with 
his in the formation of the first Prayer Book and the 



34 NOTES. 

first Constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church,, 
so radically, so unwisely, and so needlessly changed in 
after times, we claim as Reformed Episcopalians, an 
especial interest in the lives of Carolina's noble Chris- 
tian Patriots. 

No State, except Virginia, was so hostile to the in- 
troduction of the Hierarchy from England as South 
Carolina. 

The South Carolina Episcopalians were largely 
descendants of the Huguenots. Their ancestors had 
been driven from their native country, after the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew, by the influence of merciless 
bishops. The Protestantism of the descendants of these 
martyrs and confessors was not of the later German- 
silver variety but had the ring of the true metal. 

The brave officers who won the battles in the Car- 
olinas were largely Christian men— Generals Morgan 
and Sumpter who commanded at the Cowpens; Colonels 
Campell, Williams, Cleveland, Shelby, and Sevier, with. 
Major Morrow at King's Mountain; as w T ell as Colonel 
Bratton and Major Dickson, at Buck's Defeat, were all 
Presbyterian elders. Marion too was a Christian man. 
It required such men to face and repair the repeated 
disasters of those memorable campaigns. 

Ramsey, Hist. S. Carolina, ii, p. 38, says; "Great 
numbers of French Protestants sought an asylum in 
South Carolina, at different periods, who were Presby- 
terians." The number of Episcopalians was compara- 
tively small. Dr. Smyth in article, Southern Review on 
u The Revolution," p. 43, states; "In South Carolina, the 
great body of the people were non-Episcopalians. Epis- 
copalianism was indeed the established religion, but 
not, as has been recently affirmed, 'the predominant 
religion.' * * * The establishment of the Episcopalian 
religion in South Carolina was the act of a small minor- 
ity — obtained surreptitiously,— by surprise, — and by a 
majority, even then of only one vote. It never ex- 
pressed the views of the Colonists, and was never 
regarded otherwise than as unjust, tyrannical, and 
unchristian." 

When, therefore, the invitation was extended to the 
Episcopalians of South Carolina to unite in the forma- 
tion of an American Protestant Episcopal Church, the 
chief obstacle in the way of the project, was the matter 
of Bishops, as in Virginia. The history of the order 



NOTES. 35 

had not commended the institution to mankind; its 
human origin being apparent from its general results. 
The office can only be safely allowed when curbed and 
reduced as in the Primitive Church, when the Bishop 
was simply a presiding Presbyter and belonging to 
that order. Such was his position immediately after 
the Revolution, the same as now allowed in the Re- 
formed Episcopal Church, whose Constitution and 
Prayer Book have been modelled closely after the wise 
arrangements of the great men of that period, and are 
consequently truly American, free and safe. 

South Carolina and Virginia were extremely cautious 
in entering upon the work of Ecclesiastical organization. 
South Carolina came into the Union of the Churches in 
the Middle, and Southern States on the condition that 
no Bishop should be appointed over her. The Laity 
were to have a share in the Councils of the Church, their 
negative was to give them co-ordinate privileges in 
matters of ecclesiastical legislation with the clergy. So 
Democratic were these early assemblies, that in Virginia 
and South Carolina at the meetings for reorganizing 
the Church, laymen were appointed chairmen. See 
Church Monthly, October 1865, White's Memoirs, p. 
95. 

In the Convention of 1785 South Carolina appointed 
a distinguished delegation consisting of Hon. Charles 
Pinckney, Hon. Jacob Read, Hon. John Bull and Hon. 
John Kean. Messrs. Pinckney and Read were enabled 
to attend. The General Convention of 1786 had as 
delegates, Hon. John Parker and Edward Mitchel, At 
its adjourned meeting in October of the same year, John 
Rutledge, son of the eminent War Governor and states- 
men of the same name, and nephew of the celebrated 
Edward Rutledge, represented the State. Rev. Robert 
Smith appointed delegate in 1785, was unable to attend 
on account of the condition of his family. Rev. Henry 
Purcell, D. D., was representative that year. In the 
two Conventions of 1786 Dr. Robert Smith was present, 
to confirm the wise action of the previous year. 

ROBERT SMITH OF SOUTH CAROLINxl. 

Of the distinguished men who thus laid the fair 
foundations of that Church, we can speak but briefly of 
the two most eminent, Dr. Smith and Colonel Pinckney, 
both truly Reformed Episcopalians. 



36 NOTES. 

Robert Smith was educated in England, at Cambridge 
University. He was born the same year with Wash- 
ington, 1732. He became assistant minister of St. 
Philip's Church, Charleston, in 1757. He was buried in 
the cemetery of that Church in 1801. "Mr. Smith, as 
his predecessors had done, took a deep interest in the 
negro school established under the auspices of the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts, and he made it a part of his duty to visit the 
school and ascertain the proficiency of the children twice 
a week." Our Reformed Episcopal Bishop who has 
imbibed the ecclesiastical principles of this Revolutionary 
Father, as his legitimate successor, has taken up his 
Gospel work in this department, as in his other Episco- 
pal labors. 

"At the seige of Charleston by the British troops 
under Sir Henry Clinton, Mr. Smith preached as he felt 
the crisis to require, and encouraged his people by his 
own example in the defense of their liberties and homes, 
by going himself into the lines armed as a common 
soldier." Dalcho's Ck. Hist., S. Carolina, p. 216. 

"We are not surprised to read that : " Upon the fall 
of Charleston he was marked by the enemy for persecu- 
tion ; for falling ill shortly after its surrender, and even 
when his recovery was doubtful he was placed under 
double sentinels. Banished in 1780 to Philadelphia, 
he returned in 1783 and labored till his death, largely in 
education, having established the Academy w T hich 
afterward became Charleston College." See Sprague's 
Annals, p. 172. 

But troubles came upon the Church in the South, as 
in the North, by the admission to predominating 
power and influence of Bishop Seabury and his party, 
who were imbued with the feudal principles to which 
our Revolutionary fathers were so uncompromisingly 
and so rightfully hostile. Dalcho writes, p. 218. "The 
Church would not so easily (if they would for many 
years) have joined the General Association of the P. E. 
Church in the United States, had not Dr. Smith been 
at this period their principal counsellor and guide." 

The Constitution of the Church as originally care- 
fully framed by such first class minds, as Judges Jay, 
Duane, Shippen, and Peters; Governors Pinckney and 
Page; Griffin, President of Congress, and Senator 
Rutherford; in conjunction with Bishop Provoost, 



NOTES. 37 

Griffith, the Smiths, Wharton, Bishop White and other 
noble Christian legislators, was destined to be radically 
changed and the grand work to be marred and defaced, 
in order to gratify a band of men who had no sympathy 
with the principles of the American Revolution, but 
had earnestly sought to keep the colonists in subjection 
to an imperious and tyrannical King and Parliament. 
We do not believe that since Apostolic times, any 
Christian Church, in its organization has ever been 
blessed with a more distinguished and competent band 
of laborers, than those who constructed the ecclesiasti- 
cal Constitution, whose overthrow it is our painful 
task to describe in detail. 

It was a cardinal principle with Bishop Seabury that 
laymen had no right to legislate in ecclesiastical affairs. 

THE CONSTITUTION RADICALLY CHANGED. 

The Constitution as primarily framed read: "In 
every State where there shall be a Bishop duly consecra- 
ted and settled, and who shall have acceded to the articles 
of this general Ecclesiastical Constitution, he shall be 
considered as a member of the Convention ex officio.'' 1 
At the next Convention to please Bishop White, upon 
his motion, there was added to this section, these 
words: "and a Bishop shall always preside in the 
General Convention, if any of the Episcopal order be 
present." 

At the primary Convention of 1789, with the design 
of conciliating Bishop Seabury, the Constitution was 
changed: "The Bishops of this Church when there 
shall be three or more, shall, whenever General Conven- 
tions are held, form a House of Revision, and when 
any proposed act shall have passed in the General Conven- 
tion, the same shall be transmitted to the House of 
Revision for their concurrence. And if the same shall 
be sent back to the Convention, with the negative or 
non-concurrence of the House of Revision, it shall be 
again considered in the General Convention, and if the 
Convention shall adhere to the same act, by a majority 
«;f three-fifths of their body, it shall become a law to all 
intents and purposes, notwithstanding the non-concur- 
rence of the House of Revision." 

This radical departure from the primary Constitu- 
tion, in thus erecting a separate deliberative body, sim- 
ilar to the House of Lords, a second order of clergy 



38 NOTES. 

elected for life, was not a sufficient concession to Bishop 
Seabury and the Eastern clergy, and therefore an ad- 
journed Convention was held the same year, at which 
still further and more radical concessions were made, 
whose disastrous results in South Carolina, Virginia, 
and other portions of the Church, we shall proceed to 
relate. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRIMARY P. E. CONSTITUTION. 

"It is well known that our Church was formed after 
the Revolution, with an eye to what was then believed 
to be the truth and simplicity of the Gospel; and there 
appears to be some reason to regret that the motives 
which then governed have since been less operative." 

Such was the wise, but mild rebuke administered by 
John Jay, near three-quarters of a century ago, in a 
letter to the vestry of Trinity Church, when refusal 
was made by him to the use of the Institution Office in 
the parish at Bedford, New York. See Life of Jay, 
Yol. 1, p. 442. 

"This document" writes his biographer, "evinces the 
same inflexible opposition to assumed authority in the 
Church, which he had so illustriously displayed to usur- 
pations in the State." It is indeed a memorable docu- 
ment to which we shall refer again in the course of our 
investigation into the work of the [Revolutionary 
Fathers, in constructing the primary Constitution, and 
the original Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. 

As John Jay was the most illustrious architect of 
that Constitution, and fully endorsed the Prayer Book 
of 1785, it is interesting to read his statement of the 
sound principles upon which that grand work was 
based; principles which have governed Reformed Epis- 
copalians, who are now engaged in restoring the same 
Christian work, so nobly inaugurated a century ago. 

OPPOSITION TO THE EPISCOPATE. 

The hostility to "the assumed authority and the usur- 
pations" which had been characteristic of the Episco- 
pal order, which prevaded South Carolina, was equally 
shared by Jay and Duane, and others at the North. 
* It was to protect the Church from the encroachment 
of that Order, that the First Constitution was so care- 
fully framed, and if there had been wisdom and states- 



NOTES. S9 

manship in those who assumed to guide the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, adequate to the undertaking in the 
years succeeding; that Church might have kept pace in 
its growth with the nation, whose foundations had been 
laid by the same hands. 

There was good reason for the anxiety felt on the sub- 
ject of Episcopal domination, by the Episcopalians of 
Virginia and South Carolina, and by their patriotic 
brethren in New York. 

REASONS FOR ANXIETY. 

It was well known that a clergyman of extreme High 
Church, sacerdotal and exclusive views had been re- 
quested by half a score of clergymen in Connecticut, 
to cross the ocean for consecration, and that such con- 
secration had been conferred by the successors of bishops 
who had been in open hostility to the authorities of their 
nation, and had sympathized with and prayed for the 
restoration of the Popish heir of James II. Their very 
existence as a sect was based on their opposition to 
William III., whom the people of England, when 
wearied with the tyranny and usurpations of their 
Roman Catholic Monarch, had placed on the throne. 

And it was because the King and Parliament of 
Great Britain had violated the principles of constitu- 
tional liberty, re-established in the time of William III., 
that the colonists in America had revolted, and had 
been forced to establish themselves as a free and inde- 
pendent nation. 

And now the clergyman, the ablest of the company, 
who in America, had labored to frustrate the plans, and 
to prevent the success of the Revolutionary patriots, 
had returned to his country as a ruler in the Church, to 
shape and fashion the infant Communion according to 
a "concordat" arranged by those who had conferred on 
him Episcopal power. 

When we consider this marked fact in connection 
with the deep-seated general hostility to Episcopal rule 
in the colonies, we are not surprised at the action taken 
by the Protestant Episcopalians of South Carolina in 
refusing to accept a bishop for their Church. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN ADAMS. 

John Adams wrote to Mr. Niles, February 13th, 
1818: "This controversy spread an universal alarm 



40 NOTES. 

against the authority of Parliament. It excited a gen- 
eral and just apprehension, that bishops and dioceses, 
and churches and priests, and tithes, were to be im- 
posed on us by Parliament. It was known that neither 
King, nor ministry, nor archbishops, could appoint 
"bishops in America, without an act of Parliament; and 
if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the 
Church of England with all its creeds, articles, tests, 
ceremonies and tithes, and prohibit all other churches, 
as conventicles and schism shops." 

It was the consciousness of the general feeling which 
had prevailed with respect to Episcopacy, which led 
Provoost, Jay and Duane, and other patriots to frame 
their wise, safe and acceptable Constitution. 

Before proceeding further with the narrative of the 
complete abandonment of the principles of this original 
-Constitution, it is proper to call attention to another 
patriotic bishop of the South, Kev. Charles Pettigrew. 

REV. CHARLES PETTIGREW. 

In the Appendix to the Life of Judge James Iredell, 
Yol. II. p. 591, we have the "Biographical notice of the 
Bt. Rev. Charles Pettigrew, First Bishop of the Diocese 
of North Carolina." He is thus styled, inasmuch as he 
was elected to that office, and was faithful in the over- 
sight of the Church in the State. And inasmuch as 
an honest and fair election constitutes a presbyter a 
bishop; Consecration being simply an orderly and 
seemly ceremony, such as the Coronation of a King, not 
conveying power, already possessed, but affirming it; 
and moreover as Mr. Pettigrew was received as a bishop 
of the churches of all denominations, he could justly 
claim the official title which he so universally received. 

He appears indeed to have been more fully a true 
Soriptural Overseer, than any of his contemporaries. We 
read that— "During all this period he seems to have 
been not so much at the head of the Episcopal Church, 
as of religion in general, for there are various letters to 
Mm from Edward Dromgoole, and other Methodists, 
who either resided in or traveled through that region, 
and also from Lutherans, &c, giving him an account 
of their movements, and requesting an attendance at 
their meetings. Indeed the Church Establishment 
having been dissolved, and all religious organizations 
broken down, the enemies of the evil one fought 



NOTES. 41 

together, with no other bond of union than a common 
foe.' 1 

PETTIGREW A PATRIOT. 

"In his politics he was a Whig," that is a patriot.. 
"After the peace he received various invitations from 
the neighboring parts of Virginia, which were de- 
clined." 

Born in Pennsylvania, he removed to South Carolina,, 
with his father's family. His father was of Huguenot 
extraction. His ancestors came to Scotland; from 
thence emigrating to County Tyrone, Ireland, and from 
the latter country to America. The father, James Pet- 
tigrew, converted under the preaching of Whitfield,, 
abandoned the Church of England. Educated under 
two PresJgJ:erian ministers, one of them the famous- 
James Waddel, (Wirt's blind preacher); "uniting to a 
devout spirit a vigorous intellect, and highly respecta- 
ble mental acquirements; and having returned to the 
faith from which his father had withdrawn, and to 
which, for several preceding generations his ancestors- 
had belonged, he determined to devote himself to the 
ministry." He was ordained by the Bishop of London 
in 1775. 

THE CHURCH IN NORTH CAROLINA. 

In 1789 Bishop White suggested to Governor John- 
son of North Carolina, the propriety of organizing the P» 
E. Church in that State. The latter referred the matter 
to Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, who did not succeed in securing 
a Convention until May, 1794. On that occasion a con- 
stitution was framed and adopted, and Mr. Pettigrew 
elected Bishop. 

"With regard to this honor he sincerely said, Nolo 
Episcopari; the state of his health seemed absolutely to 
forbid it; but in the depressed state of the Church, and 
the scattered situation of its ministers, the acceptance 
of this part was deemed by his fellow Christians a duty,, 
and he yielded. Various alarms of yellow fever at 
Norfolk and Philadelphia, with their accompanying 
quarantine, cutting off all communication, prevented 
him from meeting the General Convention for some 
years, and in the latter part of his life declining health 
rendered him unequal to the exertion. Though he 
was thus unable to put the finishing stroke to the founda- 



42 NOTES. 

tion, yet his labors in rescuing the ministers and their 
parishes from the disconnected state in which they 
were digposed to continue, and in increasing and diffu- 
sing a zeal for religion, were of great service, not only 
in the cause of the Church, but of Christianity in 
general." Life of Iredell, II., 592. 

HIS ZEAL FOR EDUCATION. 

Mr. Pettigrew, like the two neighboring Bishops, 
Smith and Madison, entered warmly into the matter of 
education. He was greatly instrumental in establish- 
ing the University. Such was his conviction of the im- 
portance of the measure, and his zeal for its success, 
that once being compelled to choose between the 
General Convention, and a meeting of the Friends of 
the University, he preferred the latter. Jfc 

Moore in his Hist. North Carolina, 1,494, writes: "In 
1776 not more than six established ministers were to be 
found in the State. Rev. Charles Earll of Edenton, 
and Adam Boyd of Wilmington, were devoted Whigs. 

. . Bishop Pettigrew won the esteem and confidence 
of all Christians, and was their earnest co-adjutor in 
every good work. Edward Dromgoole, the Methodist 
Missionary, then planting the earliest churches of that 
faith in North Carolina, and others bore testimony 
to the noble charity of his creed and practice." 

His duties as a minister were very onerous; as he had 
three or four counties under his charge, and was ex- 
pected to preach a funeral sermon for every respectable 
parishioner. He had, also, to exercise his ministry under 
the disadvantage of a sickly climate. The death of 
Rev. Mr. Earll cast upon him the care of that whole 
section. 

In 1794 he built Pettigrew Chapel near Lake Scup- 
pernong which he presented to the Church. From 
this time till his death in 1807, he refused to receive any 
compensation for his services. "An enlightened, 
cheerful and consistent Christianity pervaded his whole 
life, and particularly characterized him in his domestic 
relations." 

AN ELOQUENT AND FITTING- EULOGY. 

The Edenton Gazette notices: "The death of that 
zealous and venerable disciple of the blessed Jesus, the 
Rev. Charles Pettigrew, Bishop of the Protestant Epis- 



NOTES. 4.0 

copal Church in this State, who died at his house in 
Tyrrel County on the 7th of April last, (1807). To do 
j ustice to the character of this pious and excellent man 
would require talents which we have not rhe happiness 
to possess, and far exceeds the narrow limits of this 
paper. His public ministrations in this place for 
many years render eulogv unnecessary. His chaste 
and classical discourses, his fervid and animated devo- 
tion, his irreproachable and evangelical life, will long, 
very long, be remembered with melancholy regret by 
those who enjoyed the advantage of his public admoni- 
tions and instructions. In him were exemplified that 
'simplicity and godly sincerity' which are the perfec- 
tion of Christian character. Oppressed by the infirm- 
ities of a feeble constitution and frequent disease, his 
cheerfulness did not desert him. As the world and its 
fleeting joys receded from his view his faith in Christ 
and hope of immortal glory acquired additional vigor. 
* * * * 'Mark the f erf ect man and behold the upright; 
for the end of that man is peace.' " 

A TRUE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN. 

We have quoted the greater part of this striking and 
beautiful eulogium on this true Apostolic bishop, that 
his memory may receive that veneration from the Re- 
formed Episcopal Church which is his due. In his pat- 
riotic devotion to his Country; in his unbounded affec- 
tion for Christians of all names; in his fraternal inter- 
course with the Church universal; in his unceasing 
devotion to the preaching of the Gospel, rather than to 
human forms of worship; in his successful furtherance 
of Gospel unity, we justly claim him as a Reformed 
Episcopalian. He stands forth a beautiful model to all 
Christian ministers. 

While the zealous champions of a boasted Episcopal, 
Digital Succession, and an undeviating adherence to the 
phrases of a human Liturgy, are held up to admira- 
tion; this eminent man of God, this Revolutionary 
patriot, this zealous evangelist and successful preacher, 
like others, has not received from the Communion he so 
faithfully served, the honored remembrance which is 
his due. 

NEGLECT OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH. 

So much absorbed was the Church in its recent union 



44 XOTES. 

with the High Church Loyalists, that its more important 
interests in other portions of the land were neglected. 
White, #n his Memoirs, p. 172, referring to the applica- 
tion from North Carolina, in 1794, and the failure of 
Mr. Pettigrew to appear, writes, "Why nothing was 
done afterwards for the carrying the design into effect, 
is not known, unless it be the decease of the Reverend 
person in question, which must have happened not long 
after." As the bishop-elect survived thirteen years, the 
want of interest manifested in the matter on the part 
of the Presiding Bishop, is of a marked character. But 
the new departure of 1789, had impressed a new charac- 
ter upon the Church. 

A general decline pervaded the Church at the South. 
When at length, sixteen years after the death of the 
Apostolic Pettigrew, the Church in North Carolina 
received a new bishop, unfortunately he belonged to 
the new regime. His views may be gathered from a 
single paragraph from a sermon — M On the doctrine of 
Divine right in the ministry, I hold and teach, that it 
can be derived only from the Apostles of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, by succession in the Church, through the 
line of Bishops as distinct from Presbyters; that it is 
essential to the validity of the Sacraments, and from 
its very nature incapable of any graduation. It is 
either Divine right or no right at all." See Bishop 
Ravenscroft's Works, Yol. 1. 

And when a regularly consecrated successor to Rav- 
enscroft was afterwards sent, imbued with Non-juring 
sentiments, that system was carried out to its logical 
conclusion, and the bishop landed in the Church of 
Rome. 

In a sermon delivered shortly after the sad perversion 
of this bishop, Rev. Charles C. Pinckney, of Charles- 
ton, S. C, a worthy member of an illustrious family, 
remarks: "Bishop Ives used to boast that he was a 
Churchman of the Hobart and Ravenscroft school." 
We admit his claim; and apprehend that he had only 
learned too well the lessons taught in that High Church 
Seminary. 

"He rcbaptized all who entered our Church from 
other denominations, though baptized as adults else- 
where; once giving as a reason to the writer that he had 
no respect for Sectarian baptism. All non-Episcopal 



NOTES. 45 

bodies he despised, counting the loss of Episcopacy 
enough to cut them off from God's favor. 

"May this fall of one of our bishops, recall to 
the remembrance of the Church, the warning voice of 
a wiser, and an older man; with wonderful forecast, 
Bishop White often protested against misunderstanding 
the word 'Priest,' in the Levitical and Komish sense. 
He declares it to be synonymous with 'Presbyter,' and 
in no wise a mediating, or sacrificing, or absolving 
officer." - 

Yet with a strange inconsistency, and inexplicable 
weakness, to please Bishop Seabury, Bishop White re- 
stored the word "priest," after he had banished it from 
the Prayer Book of the Revolution. 

It has been left to the Reformed Episcopal Church, 
following the example of the English Reformers, and 
the Revolutionary Fathers, again to eject the fatal 
word, with other expressions, necessarily promotive of 
Roman, Mediaeval and Anti-Christian errors and prac- 
tices, as history has abundantly shown. 

We are calling attention to the original Constitution 
of the Protestant Episcopal Chureh, and to the First 
Prayer Book as framed by the Patriots of the Revolu- 
tion, and to the extraordinary and radical changes 
made a few years afterwards in the grand work of this 
distinguished company of ecclesiastical legislators. 

An account has been given of the more eminent of 
the clergymen who took part in this important transac- 
tion. Of twenty-two who were present in the Conven- 
tions, we have noticed the six most prominent, five of 
whom were bishops or bishops-elect. 

The laymen who were engaged in the work of laying 
the ecclesiastical foundations, which they believed 
were to be permanent, were forty-two in number, 
twelve of whom on account of their eminence as states- 
men and jurists we shall proceed briefly to describe. In 
intellect and reputation, as well as fitness for their 
mission, they were equal, if not superior, to their cleri- 
cal co-laborers. 

DEPUTIES FROM NEW JERSEY. 

Xew Jersey was represented by a very distinguished 
deputy. Hon. David Brearley served with distinction 
as Lt. Colonel in the War of the Revolution. lie rose 
rapidly in the legal profession, was appointed U. S- 



4fi NOTES. 

District Judge, and soon reached the highest honor, 
that of Chief Justice of his State, which he held for 
nine years. He is especially deserving of record as be- 
ing a member of that famous body by whom the Con- 
stitution of our Republic was framed. He was also a 
member of the State Constitutional Convention. No 
American has held more distinguished positions at such 
an early age. He died when forty-four years old, ere 
he had reached the full maturity of his powers. 

John Rutherford may properly be noticed among 
the eminent men of New Jersey, though at the time a 
delegate from New York. Rutherford, who was a 
nephew of General Lord Stirling, had served as Colonel 
in the Revolution. He was Presidential elector for New 
Jersey on several occasions, and also U. S. Senator. 
Appointed by the Council of the State a vestryman of 
Trinity Church, in 1784, and made Clerk of the Corpo- 
ration, he resigned in 1787, on moving from the State. 
The thanks of the Board were presented him for "the 
utmost attention paid by him to the interests of the 
Corporation, and the duties of his station as clerk." 
Berrians' Hist, of Trinity Church, p. 185. 

THE PENNSYLVANIA DELEGATION. 

From Pennsylvania came more than one-third of the 
entire lay delegations, and among them were men of 
national reputation. 

Thomas Hartley was a distinguished lawyer, a Colo- 
nel in the War, and in Congress from 1789 to 1800. 

Edward Shippen,a very eminent jurist, after holding 
many distinguished positions, became the Chief Justice 
of the State. A biographer thus sums up his character: 
"Asa valuable citizen, an accomplished lawyer and 
judge, remarkable for the great extent and minute ac- 
curacy of his knowledge, he must ever be conspicuous 
among those worthies who have won, by their virtues 
and their talents, an imperishable name." National 
Portraits, Vol. 1. 

Richard Peters was Captain in the Revolution, and 
Secretary of War, from 1776 to 1781. He retired with 
the express thanks of Congress. Returning as Repre- 
sentative, he served several years, and declining a Fis- 
cal office tendered by Washington, was appointed U. S. 
Judge, an office which he filled with great distinction 
for thirty-six years. Lossing writes: "Next to Rob- 



NOTES. 47 

ert Morris, Mr. Peters was one of the most efficient 
men in providing the ways and means of carrying on 
the war. In the summer of 1781, Washington pre- 
pared to attack the British in New York, and was ex- 
pecting the aid of the Count De Grasse, with his squad- 
ron of French ships of war. He received notice that 
De Grasse 's aid could not be given. Washington was 
greatly disappointed, but instantly he conceived the ex- 
pedition to Virginia, which resulted in the capture of 
Cornwallis. Peters and Morris were both in Wash- 
ington's camp on the Hudson. At the moment when 
he conceived the Virginia expedition he turned to 
Peters, and said, 'What can you do for me?' 'With 
money everything — without it, nothing,' Peters re- 
plied, at the same time casting an anxious look toward 
Morris the great financier. 'Let me know the sum 
you desire,' said Morris. Before noon, Washington had 
completed his plans and estimates. Morris promised 
the money and raised it upon his individual security." 
Mr. Peters superintended the provision and preparation 
of the necessary supplies for this important and decisive 
enterprise. "Our Countrymen," p. 170. 

EMINENT SOUTH CAROLINAINS. 

South Carolina was ably represented in these Con- 
ventions. Hon. John Parker was a member of Con- 
gress at the time he assisted in founding the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church. Hon. John Kutledge, son of 
the eminent statesman of the same name, distinguished 
himself both in the Legislature of his State and in the 
U. S. Congress. Hon. Jacob Eead, a member of Con- 
gress, while in the Convention, became U. S. Senator, 
presided over that body, and for many years held the 
office of U. S. District Judge. The most distinguished 
delegate from the State was Hon. Chas. Pinckney. 
The name of Charles Pinckney is so identified with 
the era of the Kevolution and the Constitution, that it 
is not necessary here to recall his history. As mem- 
ber of Congress, of the Senate, as a framer of this 
country's Constitution, and repeatedly Governor of his 
native State, and as Minister Plenipotentiary, he occu- 
I>ies a pre-eminent position in the national annals. Curtis, 
in his Hist, of Constitution U. S., 1. p. 486, enumerates 
him among the "men of great distinction and ability, 
celebrated, before and since the Convention, in that 



48 NOTES. 

period of the political history of America which com- 
menced with the Revolution, and closed with the 
eighteenth century. ' ' 

VIRGINIA NOBLY REPRESENTED. 

Virginia, whose early Diocesan Conventions were re- 
splendent with great Revolutionary names, sent two of 
her most prominent statesmen to organize the American 
Episcopal Church. 

Hon. Cyrus Griffin, honorably connected with fami- 
lies in England, entered warmly into the defense of the 
just rights of the colonies, and pledged his life and 
property on the momentous struggle. He took a dis- 
tinguished part in Congress, and during the formation 
of the Constitution, was President of that Body. The 
unanimity with which he was selected by the Diocesan 
Convention of Virginia for such a responsible position, 
indicates the great respect which was felt for his ability^ 
and character, by that distinguished assembly. 

He was President of the Supreme Court of Admi- 
ralty, and Judge of U. S. Court from 1789 to 1810. 
Washington when appointing him Indian Commissioner 
styles him "a regular student of law, having filled an 
important office in the Union in the line of it, and be- 
ing besides a man of competent abilities and pure char- 
acter." 

GOVERNOR JOHN PAGE. 

Hon. John Page, one of Virginia's most noted sons, 
was among the most efficient and prominent in the 
work of the Convention. Bishop White's mention of 
him indicates the active part he took in Committees 
and on the floor of the House. No one in the Conven- 
tion, from ability and study of the matters involved, 
was more fully fitted for the great Christian work in 
which these master minds were engaged. 

Mr. Page's residence was Rosewell, on the York 
river, one of the most capacious and extensive resi- 
dences in the State; built by an eminent ancestor of the 
same name. Jefferson and Page were schoolmates and 
most intimate friends through life. Howe, in his His- 
torical Annals, describes the two honored statesmen 
enjoying from the roof of the mansion the magnificent 
•prospect of ten miles in extent, and discoursing on 
matters pertaining to the welfare of that Nation, 



NOTES. 49 

which both had been greatly instrumental in calling 
into existence. 

Mr. Page at once embraced ardently the side of the 
Colonists, and like Cyrus Griffin, risked his great estates 
and his life on the issue. At an early period, when 
Lord Dunmore, the Governor, had seized the powder 
and arms of the Commonwealth in order to cut off the 
means of military defense, Mr. Page was the only 
member of his Council who stood out against his arbi- 
trary measures. In his autobiography, Mr. Page 
writes, "I advised the Governor to give up the powder 
and arms he had removed from the magazine. But he 
flew into an outrageous passion, smiting his fist on the 
table, and saying, 'Mr. Page, I am astonished at you.' 
I calmly replied I had done my duty and had no other 
advice to give." Hives' Life of Madison, I., p. 94. 

BISHOP MEADE'S EULOGIUM. 

Col. Page was with Washington on one of his expe- 
ditions against the Indians, and commanded the militia 
to oppose the invasion of Gen. Arnold. Bishop Meade 
writes: "He was the associate and intimate friend of 
Mr. Jefferson at college, and his follower in politics 
afterwards, though always differing with him on relig- 
ious subjects, endeavoring to his latest years, by corres- 
pondence, to convince him of his errors. He was a 
zealous friend of the Episcopal Church, and defended 
in the Legislature, what he conceived, were her rights, 
against those political friends with whom he agreed on 
other points. So zealous was he in her cause that some 
wished him to take Orders, with a view to being Bishop 
of Virginia. His name may be seen on the journals of the 
earliest Conventions of Yirginia. I have a pamphlet in 
my possession in which his name is in connection with 
those of Robert C. Nicholas, and Colonel Bland, as 
charging one of the clergy in or about Williamsburg 
with false views on the subject of the Trinity, and of 
the eternity of the punishment of the damned. His 
theological library was well stored f Or that day. The 
early fathers of Greek and Latin, with some other val- 
uable books, were presented to myself by one of his 
sons, and form a part of my library. It may not be 
amiss to repeat what I have said in a preface to the 
little volume written as a legacy by the first of this 
name to his posterity, — that seven of them are now 



50 NOTES. 

ministers of the Episcopal Church, and two who were 
such are deceased." "Old Churches of Virginia," I. 
148. Bishop Meade says further, p. 333: "Mr. Page 
was not only the patriot, soldier, and politician, the 
well-read theologian, and zealous Churchman — so that, 
as I have said before, some asked him to take Orders, 
with a view to being the first Bishop of Virginia,— but 
he was a most affectionate domestic character. His 
tenderness as a father and attention to his children is 
seen in the fact that, when attending Congress held in 
New York in 1789, he was continually writing very short 
letters to his little ones, even before they could read 
them." 

In one of these letters Mr. Page writes of New 
York: "This town is not half as large as Phila- 
delphia, nor in any manner to be compared to it in 
beauty and elegance. Philadelphia, I am well assured, 
has more inhabitants than Boston and New York 
together. The streets here are badly paved, very dirty, 
narrow as well as crooked, and filled up with a strange 
variety of wooden, stone and brick buildings, full of 
hogs and mud." 

Mr. Page was one of the most conspicuous mem- 
bers of the Convention which formed the Virginia 
Constitution; member of the first U. S. Congress, and 
Governor of the State from 1802 to 1805. He held 
other public offices till his death in 1808. 

President Madison thus warmly eulogizes him: "The 
memory of Governor Page will always be classed with 
that of the most distinguished patriots of the Kevolu- 
tion. Nor was he less endeared to his friends, among 
whom I had an intimate place, by the interesting 
accomplishments of his mind and the warmth of his 
social affections, than he was to his country by the 
evidence he gave of devotion to the republicanism of 
its institutions." Kives' Life, I. 76. 

Pre-eminently competent was this great and good. 
man for the work in which with Griffith and Griffin 
of his State he was associated, and we may, from 
a knowledge of the admirable fitness of these remark- 
able men, appreciate the astonishment and grief 
with which the Churchmen of Virginia beheld in a 
few years the summary abandonment and overthrow 
of their Constitution and Prayer Book, in order to pro- 
pitiate a few clerical loyalists, of the most extreme eo 



NOTES. 51 

elesiastical stripe, and therefore doubly obnoxious to 
liberal-minded patriotic Americans. 

THE SAD RESULT. 

That the Church in Virginia, staggered by such 
wholly unexpected and utterly inconsistent action, 
should have lost hope of success, and ceased further to 
progress, was the legitimate, logical result of the 
marvelous blunders of the ecclesiastical legislation of 
the Conventions of 1789. 

It was reserved for Bishops Moore and Meade, men of 
the stamp of Griffith and Griffin and Page; of Jay and 
Duane; of Peters and Pinckney, in later years, to re- 
cover in some measure, the ground so hopelessly and 
rashly lost. That Diocese is suffering now from its 
continued organic connection with a Body hopelessly 
infected with mediaeval error in its Liturgy and Offices, 
and with feudal principles imbedded in its Constitu- 
tion and Laws. 

If forty years ago, when in General Convention it 
failed in its earnest efforts to check the irresistible 
development of the semi-Romish elements within the 
Church, through the agency of the Oxford Tract move- 
ment; it had then asserted its independent, inalienable, 
Christian rights, arid had severed its connection with 
an organization drifting away from the Word of God, 
and pure Gospel truth; a nobler, purer, and more ex- 
tensive Communion would have been the happy result 
of such a courageous return to the sound doctrine, pure 
worship, and manly, liberal spirit of the pioneer ec- 
clesiastical architects of the Revolution. 

No delegation exercised a more powerful influence 
upon the General Conventions of 1785 and 1786 than 
the one from New York. 

The position, patriotism, and learning of Bishop 
Provoost, the exalted services and character of John 
Jay, the great ability and influence of James Duane, 
with the attendance of Colonel John Rutherford, ves- 
tryman and clerk of Trinity Corporation, who also ap- 
peared' as a Representative from the same State, con- 
tributed greatly to the efficiency and success of the 
work. 

The result was the free, American Episcopal Consti- 
tution of which that of the Reformed Episcopal Church 
is the counterpart. The revision of the Prayer Book 



52 NOTES. 

on a sound Scriptural and Protestant basis was largely 
due to these eminent Christian statesmen. 

Born in New York city in February, 1732, the same 
year and .month with Washington, and educated for 
the Law in the office of the eminent Colonial counsel, 
James Alexander, father of Lord Stirling, Duane was 
admitted as attorney in 1754. In 1759 he married the 
eldest daughter of Colonel Robert Livingston, propri- 
etor of Livingston Manor. From this connection, and 
the large estate inherited from his father, and his own 
native talent he soon attained extensive practice and 
influence in his profession. His offices before the war 
were Clerk in Chancery, and temporarily, Attorney 
General. 

PUBLIC SERVICES OF JAMES DUANE. 

The people of New York city and the neighborhood, 
elected Mr. Duane to the Congress of 1774 when the 
Colonial authorities refused to act. From the journal 
of John Adams it appears that Duane was the most 
prominent man in that delegation. Duane and Jay 
were appointed to the Committee to state, the rights 
of the Colonies. Duane was re-elected to the Congress 
of 1775. Recalled home with Mr. Jay to assist in 
framing a State Constitution, he was thereby prevented 
with his illustrious co-patriot from signing the Decla- 
ration of Independence, passed during their absence. 
His name is appended to the Articles of Confederation 
of 1781. 

Leaving New York on the 8th of June, 1774, he 
never returned until he entered it in triumph on the 
evacuation of the British in 1783. In the same year he 
served as a Senator in the State Legislature, and also 
as one of the Council for the Government of the 
Southern District of New York. 

When Duane entered his native city, "he found his 
houses in King (now Pine) street, and at the corner of 
Water and Fly streets, almost entirely destroyed. His 
farm, as he calls it, consisting of about twenty acres, 
at what is now called Gramercie Park, and its vicinity, 
was in pretty good order, the house having been occu- 
pied by one of the British Generals." Jones' Mem. 
Doc. Hist. N. Y., IV., 1077. 

In 1784, the Common Council petitioned the Gov- 
ernor to make Mr. Duane mayor, "as no one," they 



NOTES. 53 

say, "is better qualified, so none will be more accepta- 
ble to us and our constituents at large than Mr. Du- 
ane. Few have sacrificed more or deserve better from 
their country." 

Under him in the Mayor's Court where he presided 
for six years, were trained to eminence, Hamilton, 
Burr, Tronp, the Livingstons, Hoffman and others. 
His decisions were all confirmed by the Supreme 
Court. 

During a portion of this period Duane also served as 
State Senator, and was in the Convention of New 
York, which adopted the U. S. Constitution in 1788. 
General Washington appointed him the First District 
Judge for New York when the new Government went 
into operation. After holding this office for five years, 
he retired to his extensive estates at Duanesburgh, 
where he died in February, 1797. 

HIS INTEREST IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 

The immense amount of business transacted by Mr. 
Duane would seem to preclude him from taking part 
in ecclesiastical affairs, but we learn from Judge Jones 
that, "no layman of the Episcopal Church was more 
instrumental than himself in uniting all its members 
under one Constitution, and in obtaining the Conse- 
cration of her first Bishops." Mem. p. 1083. 

"We find him taking an active part on the side of 
the Church * * * * in the disputes about taxation 
by authority of Parliament alone, when such au- 
thority was first exercised. He was a decided Church- 
man, but like his friends Jay and Chancellor Living- 
ston, he was a strenuous advocate both for civil and re- 
ligious liberty." 

"In 1784, the Council took possession of the property 
of Trinity Church, set aside an election of vestrymen 
that had been held just before the Americans regained 
New York, and ordered a new election, in which Mr. 
Duane was chosen one of the Church Wardens, and 
other Whigs, vestrymen. This election was afterwards 
confirmed by Act of Legislature, and the persons 
elected chose as rector of the Church, the Kev. Samuel 
Provoost, a Whig, who had left New York after the 
British took possession, and who was afterwards the 
Bishop of the Diocese. The property was afterwards 
restored , and Mr. Duane continued the elected Church 



54 NOTES. 

Warden so long as he remained a resident of the City 
of New York." Jones' Mem., p. 1077. 

In April, 1794, Mr. Duane resigned the Wardenship 
which he had held for ten years, having been also a 
vestryman of the Corporation for several years previous 
to the Revolution. Resolutions highly expressive of 
respect were transmitted by the vestry to Mr. Duane, 
through his intimate friend of congenial ecclesiastical 
and civil views, Bishop Provoost. Before his death 
Mr. Duane erected a church edifice at his individual 
expense, which he presented to the parish at Duanes- 
burgh. 

THE STANDING AND INFLUENCE OF JAMES DUANE. 

His biographer tells us that he was a man of genial 
nature and much beloved by his friends. This fact 
comes out incidentally in a letter from Robert Morris to 
John Jay, written Feb. 5, 1777. Morris was second 
only to Washington in services during the Revolution. 
Botta,inhis" War of Independence," III. 343, writes of 
Morris: "The Americans certainly owed, and still owe,, 
as much acknowledgment to the financial operations 
of Robert Morris, as to the negotiations of Benjamin 
Franklin, or even to the arms of Washington." In his 
letter to Jay, Morris writes: "I hate to pay compli- 
ments, and would avoid the appearance of doing it, but 
I cannot refrain from saying I love Duane, admire 
Livingston, and have an epithet for you if I had been 
writing to another." Jay's Life I, 66. On October 
8th, 1784, at a Convention of Clergy and Laity, while 
Chancellor Livingston was Warden of Trinity Church r 
he was appointed Trustee of the Corporation for the 
Relief of Widows and Orphans of the Episcopal 
Church, together with Jay and Morris. To the same 
Board were appointed Duer, Rutherford, Governor 
Lewis, Hamilton, Alsop, and Walter Livingston, to- 
gether with Governor Morris, of Philadelphia. In the 
Convention which appointed them sat Col. Marinus 
Willett, of New York, and Richard Willing, of Phila- 
delphia. Such were some of the eminent names con- 
nected with the infancy of the American Episcopal 
Church. 

With reference to the general view of the conspicu- 
ous ability and services of James Duane, we will con- 
fine ourselves to the testimony of Alexander Hamilton* 



NOTES. 5S 

himself confessedly the most commanding intellect of 
his time. Hamilton, in a memorable letter written to 
Duane while in Congress, in 1780, in which he outlines 
with extraordinary power the future Constitution of 
our Country, closes thus: u My dear sir, this letter is 
hastily written, and with a confidential freedom, not as 
to a member of Congress, whose feelings may be sore at 
the prevailing clamor, but as to a friend who is in a 
situation to remedy public disorders,— who wishes for 
nothing so much as truth, and who is desirous for in- 
formation even from those less capable of judging than 
himself." Hamilton's Life I, pp. 284-305. 

It remains to present a notice of John Jay, and then 
there will be stated the intelligent and earnest efforts 
of Jay and Duane in connection with Bishop Provoost 
and others to organize the Episcopal Church on a free, 
Scriptural, American basis, and to preserve it from the 
attempts of Bishop Seabury and his party to substitute 
the feudal, illiberal, and Semi-Komish principles of the 
Non- Jurors, which have ever proved such a blight to 
the Church. While interesting, it is a melancholy his- 
tory full of warning; but at the same time it is satis- 
factory and strengthening to Reformed Episcopalians 
to be assured that they are in the fullest sympathy with 
the great Kevolutionary Patriots, whose services to the 
Church, as well as the State, we have been privileged 
briefly to notice. 

THE MOST EMINENT OF REFORMED EPISCOPALIANS. 

We have reserved for the last notice of the founders 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Revolution, 
the most eminent of that illustrious assembly of Chris- 
tian legislators, regarded by many as the purest states- 
man, of the first order of that unrivalled company of 
heroes, who founded our Republic. 

Of John Jay, the Historian Hildreth remarks: "In 
lofty disinterestedness, in unyielding integrity, no one 
of the great men of the Revolution approached so near 
Washington." 

We shall establish this position by the testimony of 
hjs contemporaries, and inasmuch as this great man was a 
thorough Reformed Episcopalian, and framed the 
original Protestant Episcopal Church upon the identi- 
cal principles which characterize our Communion, we 
justly claim him as belonging to tis. We fortunately,. 



56 NOTES. 

moreover, have his successive protests against the ex- 
clusive, sacerdotal, arrogant spirit which characterized 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, after the Constitution 
-and Prayer Book which he, with his pre-eminent asso- 
ciates had constructed, was ignored; and a Communion 
based on opposite, anti- American, unsafe, and justly 
■unpopular principles was substituted by the General 
Convention of 1789. 

John Jay survived that Convention for thirty years. 
He foresaw the disastrous results which might occur 
through unwise legislation, and these, with his gifted 
co-laborers, he earnestly labored to preclude. His wise 
and faithful testimony may well be pondered by Pro- 
testant Episcopalians. Keformed Episcopalians will be 
strengthened and stimulated by its perusal. 

We have lingered longer on the history of these departed 
Christian statesmen because they richly deserve to be 
recalled to our remembrance, who are enjoying the 
fruits of their sufferings, and their heroic struggles. 

Their testimony to the soundness and substantial 
worth of our principles is conclusive and overwhelming, 
.and inasmuch as in the contest for the liberties and 
rights of their country, they struggled and succeeded 
against almost insuperable difficulties,, so may we, 
who inherit their ecclesiastical principles, finally tri- 
umph, in our stand for a primitive, Scriptural Episco- 
pacy, and a pure, Protestant Liturgy. 

PIOW WASHINGTON REGARDED JAY. 

When President Washington assumed his Office, he 
showed more confidence in John Jay than in any other 
of his contemporaries, for he offered him the choice of 
the offices within his gift. After Jay had been con- 
firmed as Chief Justice, Washington writes : "In nom- 
inating you for the important station which you now 
fill, I only acted in conformity with my best judgment, 
-but I trust did a grateful thing to the good citizens of 
these United States. " Writings of Washington, X. , 35. 

THE OPINION OF JOHN ADAMS. 

Similar was the opinion entertained of him by John 
Adams. " I often say that when my confidence in Mr. 
Ja}' shall cease, I must give up the cause of confidence 
and renounce it with all men," were the words of 
Axlams; and when he appointed him Chief Justice, 



NOTES. 57 

while Governor of New York, an office which he 
declined, he writes: "I had no permission from you 
to take this step, but it appeared to me that Providence 
has thrown in my way an opportunity not only of 
marking to the public the spot where, in my opinion,, 
"•he greatest mass of worth remained collected in one 
individual, but of furnishing my country with the best 
security its inhabitants afforded against the increasing 
dissolution of morals." New York Review, Oct., 1841 1 
p. 326. Letters of John Adams, Dec. 19, 1800. 

EULOGIUM OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

President John Quincy Adams in his Jubilee of the 
Constitution pronounced before the N. Y. Hist. 
Society, 1839, p. 98, thus succinctly sums up the char- 
acter and services of this remarkable man: " Mr. Jay 
was then Chief Justice of the United States. And how 
shall I dare to speak to YOU of a. native of your own 
State, and one of the brightest ornaments, not only of 
your State, but of his country and of human nature. 
At the dawn of manhood he had been one of the dele- 
gates from the people of New York, at the first Conti- 
nental Congress of 1774. In the course of the Revolu- 
tionary War, he had been successively President of 
Congress, one of their ministers in Europe — one of the 
negotiators of the preliminary and definitive treaties 
of peace, and Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the Con- 
federation Congress till the transition to the Constitu- 
tional government, and at the organization of the 
Judicial Tribunals of the Union was placed with the 
unanimous sanction of the public voice at their head. 
With this thickening crowd of honors gathering round 
him as he trod the path of life, he possessed with a 
perfectly self-controlled ambition, a fervently pious, 
meek and quiet, but firm and determined spirit. As 
one of the authors of the Federalist, and by official 
and personal influence as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 
and as a most respected citizen of New York he had 
contributed essentially to the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion." 

Daniel Webster remarked, Wks., I., 207: " When the 
spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it 
touched nothing less spotless than itself." "Go on, 
my friend," writes Robert Morris, " you deserve and 
will receive the gratitude of your Country. History 



'58 NOTES. 

will hand down your plaudits to posterity. The men 
of the present day, who are generally least grateful to 
their contemporaries, esteem it an honor to be of your 
acquaintance." Jay's Life, II., 110. 

Gulian C. Verplanck thus eloquently expresses the gen- 
eral sentiment: U A halo of veneration seemed to 
encircle him as one belonging to another world, though 
lingering among us. When the tidings of his death 
came to us, they were received through the nation, not 
with sorrow or mourning, but with solemn awe, like 
that with w r hich we read the mysterious passage of ancient 
Scripture, 'And Enoch walked with God, and he 

WAS NOT FOR GOD TOOK HIM.'" Vol. II., p. 463. 
JAY A PROTESTANT CHURCHMAN. 

It is not surprising that such an eminent Christian 
statesman should take a great interest in founding the 
future American Episcopal Church to which he was 
intelligently and devotedly attached. 

Mr. Jay at that time, with James Duane w r as a War- 
den of Trinity Church, then as now the most promi- 
nent parish of its Communion. A descendant of the 
Huguenots he was a most unyielding Protestant. He 
was at the same time a thorough Episcopalian by in- 
heritance and conviction. 

INFLUENCE OF CONVERTS FROM PURITANISM. 

There was this marked difference between the men 
who laid the original foundations of the Church in 
wisdom and moderation, and those through whom 
these foundations were overthrown. 

At the time of the birth of Bishop Seabury, his 
father was a licensed Congregational preacher. 

Bishop Parker was educated for the Congregational 
ministry. Bishop Bass, his predecessor in Massachu- 
setts, preached four years as a Congregationalism 

The father of Bishop Jarvis renounced the Congrega- 
tional Communion about the time of his son's birth. 

Dr. Bela Hubbard was a Congregationalist at the 
time he graduated from college. 

At the demand chiefly of these five clergymen, the 
grand American Episcopal work of Provoost, Jay and 
Duane; Griffith and Page; Pinckney and Peters, and 
their pre-eminent associates; old Episcopalians; was al- 
lowed to be dismantled, and the feudal product of the 



NOTES. 59 

Stewarts and the Non-Jurors, to be substituted in its 
room, and thus it has remained to the present day. 

ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES LEAD TO EXTREMES. 

That the converts from the Puritan system became 
advocates of extreme Episcopal Liturgical views was 
natural, and the general extravagance of sentiment 
in these directions in the P. E. Communion, has its 
origin in that source, a change of base on the part of 
so many of its clergy. The late eminent Dr. Nott, 
wisely remarked: "Men who go over from one denom- 
ination to another always stand up more than straight, 
and for two reasons: First, to satisfy their new friends 
that they have heartily renounced their former error, 
and secondly, to convince their former friends that 
they had good reason for desertion." 

The loyalty of Jay and Duane to their Church was 
unquestioned. The eminent Thomas Jones, a promi- 
nent loyalist and Church of England man, in his "His- 
tory of New York," recently published, but written at 
the time of the Revolution, p. 35, writes: "Duane and 
Jay were both gentlemen of eminence in the law, had 
each a sufficiency of ambition, with a proper sense of 
pride, are both strong Episcopalians, and almost 
adored the British Constitution in Church and State." 

EMINENT FITNESS OF JOHN JAY FOR THE WORK. 

For the construction of the new Ecclesiastical Con- 
stitution and the preparation of the Liturgy and Offices, 
we see that Mr. Jay was fitted beyond most men; from 
his simple Scriptural piety, his pre-eminent experience 
as a statesman, his Christian studies, his singular mod- 
eration, and his almost unequalled gift as a writer. 
Of his memorable paper presented to Congress in 1774, 
on "The Rights of the Colonies in General," Mr. Jeffer- 
son said: "It is a production certainly of the finest 
pen in America." 

In the Conventions of 1785 and 1786, the Constitu- 
tion and Prayer Book were prepared. At the three 
Conventions either Mr. Jay or Duane were present, 
with Bishop Provoost. All were loyal Americans and 
liberal Churchmen, and concerted together to preserve 
the infant Communion free from the influence of the 
unsound and dangerous ecclesiastical principles, which 



60 NOTES. 

were prominently represented by Bishop Seabury, who 
had been consecrated by the Scotch Non-Jurors in 1784. 

As we shall show, these men were opposed to a 
union with Bishop Seabury, and purposely impressed 
principles upon the Constitution and Prayer Book, 
to which they were fully aware he was violently op- 
posed. If these had been suffered to remain, the en- 
tangling and disastrous alliance would never have been 
consummated, and the Church would doubtless have 
been saved from its departure from its original princi- 
ples; ''Formed," as it was, in the words of this wise, 
Christian patriot, "after the Revolution, with an eye 
to what was then believed to be the truth and sim- 
plicity of the Gospel." Life of Jay, vol. I., p. 442. 

When the General Convention assembled in Philadel- 
phia in 1785, it was in pursuance of an invitation from 
a somewhat informal meeting in the city of New York, 
September, 1784, at which the leading spirits were of 
the Clergy, Rev. Messrs. White, Piovoost, Wharton, 
Smith, and Griffith; and of the Laity, Messrs. Duane, 
Willett, Alsop, Willing, Peters and Powell. All of the 
Clergy here enumerated attended in 1785. Of the Laity, 
Willett, Alsop and Willing were absent. Their places 
were amply filled by other men of distinction, as 
Shippen, Hartley, Page and Pinckney. 

DANGERS TO BE AVOIDED. 

In framing the Constitution, there was especial need 
to guard against the claim of exclusive Divine right on 
the part of the Episcopate, priestly functions on the 
part of the presbyters, and the denial of the co-ordi- 
nate rights of the laity. 

These claims had been asserted in the State of Con- 
necticut, where the clergy in secret council, without 
lay co-operation, which was carefully ignored, had 
chosen one for Bishop who had been consecrated under 
peculiar circumstances, such as had created alarm 
among the patriotic Episcopalians*of New York, Vir- 
ginia, and South Carolina. 

It will be seen that men like Provoost. Duane, Page 
and Pinckney, who had suffered in establishing the Re- 
public, took good care that the rights of the laity 
should be protected, and that the claims and preroga- 
tives of the Bishops, an order through whose agency, 
the Puritans had been compelled to leave their native 



NOTES. 01 

country; who had legislated as spiritual lords in Eng- 
land, and through whose influence the non-conformist 
clergy had been brutally ejected; should be relegated to 
their position in the Primitive Church, simply that of 
Presiding Presbyteis, chosen by the voice of the people. 

THE POSITION OF BISHOPS. 

Therefore, in framing the Constitution, these intel- 
ligent Christian legislators inserted as the third Article, 
the following: u In every State where there shall be a 
bishop duly consecrated and settled, and who shall have 
acceeded to this General Ecclesiastical Constitution, he 
shall be considered as a member of the Convention ex 
officio. 

It was the design to prevent in the future Church the 
dangerous aggrandizement of power by the Bishops, in 
constituting a separate House, 'and that this was the 
settled purpose of these legislators is more clearly evi- 
dent from the action at the next Convention in 1786, 
when on the motion of Dr. White, this section was 
thus amended: "In every State where there shall be a 
bishop duly consecrated and settled, and who shall 
have acceded to the Articles of this ISeclesiastical Con- 
stitution, he shall be considered as a member of the 
General Convention ex officio; and a bishop shall always 
preside in the General Convention, if any of the Epis- 
copal order be present." 

NO SEPARATE HOTJ8E OF BISHOPS. 

It is evident how carefully these clear-headed patriots 
guarded against the evil of allowing the bishops to 
legislate as a separate order, and thus secure to the 
clergy an overwhelming preponderance of power. 

The Convention had carefully protected the rights of 
the clerical order by adopting the principle set forth in 
the preliminary meeting of 1784, as follows: "That the 
Clergy and Laity assembled in Convention, shall delib- 
erate in one body, but shall vote separately; and the 
concurrence of both shall be necessary to give validity 
to every measure.' ' 

Thus, two principJ.es were clearly established. That 
there should not l>e two separate Hou°es to legislate; 
and moreover that Clergy and Laity should have co- 
ordinate powers. This was the Rational, Republican, 



62 NOTES. 

and Primitive System adopted by the Revolutionary 
Episcopalians. 

And that this was deliberately done, with admirable 
forethought, becomes more evident from the action of 
Duane and Jay, evidently with the concurrence of 
Bishop Provoost, when these distinguished statesmen 
were both Wardens of Trinity Church, and Bishop 
Provoost was Rector. 

MR. JAY'S RESOLUTION FOR PROTECTION OF THE 
LAITY. 

In the meeting of the Vestry, October, 1789, to ap- 
point delegates to the General Convention of that year, 
Mr. Jay moved that the Corporation would adopt the 
following resolution, viz.: "That the delegates now 
chosen to represent this congregation at the next Con- 
vention be, and they hereby are, instructed not to con- 
sent to, but on the contrary, to oppose every proposed 
Constitution for the American Episcopal Church, and 
every proposed alteration in the one of 1786, that shall 
not give to the laity equal powers with the clergy in the 
making of all acts, laws, and regulations binding on 
the Church." 

The patriotic vestry of 1784 having been removed, 
and a new one from the old loyalist element who had 
returned to the city, having been chosen, the wardens 
were overborne, and the consideration of the resolution 
postponed. Berrian's Hist, of Trinity Church, p. 176. 

Jay and Duane sought by this vigorous resolution to 
forestall the efforts of the party who desired to unite 
with Bishop Seabury and the New England Loyalists, 
who demanded as a condition of union, that the Bishops 
should legislate as a separate order, with the veto 
power on the Lower House, thus giving to the clergy 
a duplicated power over the laity, through the votes of 
two distinct clerical orders. 

THE PATRIOT CHURCHMEN DEFEATED. 

How Seabury and his party triumphed, and how the 
feudal system was stamped upon the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church by the abandonment of the Constitution 
framed by the eminent statesmen of the Revolution, 
will be narrated in its proper place. 



NOTES. 63 

ANOTHER DANGER. 

These wise statesmen of 1785 sought to guard against 
another danger. The Church of England in New 
York, Connecticut and New Jersey, had been mostly 
loyal to the Crown. 

To the southward its members had more generally 
espoused the Cause of Liberty, Justice and the Revolu- 
tion. We have previously shown how that if the 
Cause of Liberty and Independence had rested with 
Episcopalians alone, it would have failed. 

The Convention of 1785 determined to secure to the 
infant Church a patriotic clergy, who would be in sym- 
pathy with the new Republic, and would be therefore 
fitted to be instructors of the rising generation, in the 
patriotic, American principles of its noble founders. 

SERVICE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY. 

Fresh from service and suffering in the State, and in 
the field, they thus ordered: "On motion, Resolved, 
That the Fourth of July shall be observed by this Church 
for ever, as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God, 
for the inestimable blessings of religious and civil lib- 
erty vouchsafed to the United States of America." 

"The Rev. Dr. Smith, from the committee to prepare 
a form of prayer and thanksgiving for the Fourth of 
July, reported that they had prepared the same. Or- 
dered, That it now be received and read. Ordered, 
That the said report be received and read by para- 
graphs; which being done, Resolved, That the said 
form of prayer be used in this Church, on the Fourth of 
July for ever." 

Thus was the Church consecrated to free, American 
principles, by this careful, deliberate action. 

SOUTH CAROLINA AND PENNSYLVANIA RESOLU- 
TIONS. 

And with respect to this Fourth of July service 
which is one admirably constructed and eminently 
suitable, we find that the Convention of South Caro- 
lina of 1786, reaffirmed a resolution passed by the P. E. 
Convention of Pennsylvania, viz: "That the Fourth 
of July shall be observed by this Church forever as a 
day of thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the inesti- 
mable blessings of religious and civil liberty vouch- 



64 NOTES. 

• 

safed to the United States of America." In Charles- 
ton, religious services on that day were attended by 
great numbers of rejoicing worshipers. The large 
churches of St. Philip's and St. Michael's were 
crowded with attendants. Is it wonderful that when 
those patriots, with those of Virginia heard that at 
the Convention of 1789, through the influence of the 
Loyalists of New York and New England, the Fourth 
of July service had been rejected and eliminated, and 
that the Non-juring principles had triumphed in the 
overthrow of the Scripturally revised Book of Common 
Prayer, that the Church at the South received a fatal 
blow from which it has never fully recovered ? 

OPINION OF JOHN ADAMS. 

These Southern patriots whose lands had suffered so 
grievously in the war that had achieved American In- 
dependence, felt justly with John Adams, as he wrote 
to his wife on the 5th of July, 1776: "The Fourth of 
July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of 
America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by 
succeeding generations as the great anniversary festi- 
val. It ought to be commemorated as the day of de- 
liverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty 
God. It ought to be solemnized with pomps, shows, 
games, sports, guns, bells, bon-fires and illuminations,, 
from one end of the continent to the other, from this 
time forward forever." 

The Protestant Episcopal Church did not fail in its 
duty of commemorating this grandest of political 
events; it was only when it was handed over to those- 
who had sought to keep the nation in the hands of its 
tyrants, that the celebration which so emphatically 
condemned their previous history was disallowed, and 
thereby the confidence of the nation justly and irre- 
parably forfeited. 

BISHOP WHITE'S DEFENSE UNTENABLE. 

The very reasoning by which Bishop White would 
palliate his unjustifiable assent to the destruction of 
this wise and fitting work of his patriotic fellow-labor- 
ers of 1785 and 1786, carries its own condemnation. He 
writes, Mem. p. 105: "Greater streps is laid on this 
matter, because of the notorious fact, that the majority 
of the clergy could not have used the service without 



NOTES. 65 

■subjecting themselves to ridicule and censure.'" But 
what, did the American people want with religious 
teachers who did not accept heartily the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence ? Were they fitted to 
be instructors of the rising generation ? Would not 
the infant Church have been better served by fewer 
ministers, but who were in sympathy with the masses 
of the victorious and triumphant nation, fresh from 
the sufferings endured in the great struggle? But, 
as w r e have before remarked, this insane passion for 
uniformity, and for an aggregation of utterly uncon- 
genial elements was then, as it has been since, the 
bane of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The action 
of the Convention of 1789 utterly destroyed all prospect 
of that Church becoming, what it might have been, 
and was entitled to be, among the largest, most ac- 
ceptable and most influential of American Churches. 
As a legitimate and necessary result it has sunk numer- 
ically to the third class and ranks as seventh. 

Bishop Provoost writes in 1786: "The thanksgiving 
for the Fourth of July in all probability, is one princi- 
pal cause of the opposition to the alterations in the 
Book. 1 ' 

Most unfortunately the opposition of Seabury and 
his friends prevailed. "Peace at any price," was to be 
secured, even by a discreditable and disastrous change 
of base. 

The public enemies of the "Revolution were admitted 
to a predominating influence, and with their admission 
the Constitution and Liturgy of Jay, Duane, Page, 
Pinckney, Griffin and Peters, was sacrificed on the 
altar of a false and hollow union. 

THE RADICAL CHANGE IN THE CONSTITUTION. 

We have seen how carefully the framers of the 
Constitution of 1785, avoided the evils which had 
attended the Church in its past experience, from the 
principle of Divine Right, in a third Order of Ministers, 
to whom had been committed the exclusive power of 
Ordination, Confirmation, and Jurisdiction. They 
gave to the Laity a co-ordinate power of Legisla- 
tion, and reducing the Episcopate to its original Scrip- 
tural arrangement, an order identical with the 
Presbyterate , they constituted the General Convention 



66 NOTES. 

with but one House for the transaction of Ecclesiastial 
work. 

At the next Convention of 1786, they affirmed the 
Primitive principle, that the Bishop should be "primus 
inter pares, 1 '' and ordered that "a Bishop shall always 
preside in the General Convention, if anyof the Episco- 
pal order be present." Thus the Constitution remained 
until the year 1789. Drs. Provoost and White in the 
mean time had been consecrated Bishops. 

HOW THE CHANGE WAS EFFECTED. 

But, as we have seen, there was another Bishop who 
had been consecrated under very different circum- 
stances. Elected secretly by ten Presbyters, without the 
knowledge or concurrence of the Laity, refused 
consecration by the Bishops of the Church of England,. 
Dr. Seaburyhad been consecrated by the Non-juring 
Bishops of Scotland, whose views of doctrine and 
discipline were not in accord with the framers of the 
Constitution and Prayer Book of 1785. 

The Preface of the Prayer Book of 1785 states plainly 
that the principles of the Divines who w r ere loyal to 
William III. and the amendments proposed by those 
eminent Reformers, had been incorporated in the 
primary, American, Episcopal Liturgy. 

Recognizing no Chureh not Episcopal, Bishop Sea- 
bury and the New England clergy, were entirely cut 
off from fraternal ecclesiastical relations with any. 
ecclesiastical body, unless a union was formed with, 
that represented by Bishops Provoost and White. 

This union was earnestly desired. But the under- 
standing upon which Bishop Seabury received conse- 
cration, w T as that Laymen were not to legislate for the 
Church, and moreover that the distinct assent of Bishops 
as a superior order by Divine right was essential to the 
validity of Ecclesiastical proceedure. 

The Constitution and Prayer Book of 1785 were- 
framed in accordance with the principles of the glorious- 
Revolution of William III. which were in consonance 
with those of the American Revolution. 

But the principles of Bishop Seabury and his friends 
were avowedly the same as those of the Bishops of 
James II. and these same divines had been outspoken 
opponents of the patriots who had secured liberty to the 
American Colonies. They had written, and preached, 



NOTES. 07 

and prayed, and labored, in the cause of the invading 
armies. 

BISHOP WHITE YIELDS THE MAIN PRINCIPLE. 

Lamentable and strange is the fact that Bishop 
White yielded the main points in the controversy; 
allowed the Constitution and Prayer Book of 1785 to be 
overthrown; and although Laymen were admitted to 
legislate in Conventions, yet the readmission of the 
priestly principle of the ministry,and the adoption of a 
separate House of Bishops, with an absolute negative 
on the acts of the lower House, destroyed the safeguards 
erected by the Revolutionary Fathers, and prepared the 
way for errors and disasters which have naturally 
followed such a weak, unwise, inconsistent, and inde- 
fensible surrender of the principles adopted and 
affirmed by the great and good men who founded the 
American Protestant Episcopal Church. 
. In 1789 this radical and revolutionary change was 
made in the constitution framed in 1785. 
Article III. of the Constitution of 1789 reads thus : 
"The Bishops of this Church, when there shall be 
three or more, shall, whenever General Conventions are 
held, form a separate House, with a right to originate 
and propose acts, for the concurrence of the House of 
Deputies, composed of Clergy and Laity; and when any 
proposed act shall have passed the House of Deputies, 
the same shall be transmitted to the House of Bishops, 
who shall have a negative thereupon, unless ad- 
hered to by four fifths of the other House; and all 
acts of the Convention shall be authenticated by both 
Houses." 

THE CONVENTION OF 1808. 

In the later General Convention of 1808, the w r ords: 
"unless adhered to by four fifths of the low r er House" 
was struck out, and thus an absolute veto was given to 
the House of Bishops upon the proceedings of the 
entire body of Presbyters and Laymen of the lower 
House. The feudal system was thus permanently 
engrafted upon the Protestant Episcopal Church. The 
sad results which have attended its later history are the 
simple, logical outcome upon such retrogressive and 
humiliating legislation. 

It is very remarkable that when this complete 



68 NOTES. 

surrender to the principle of exclusive Episcopal 
Divine right was made: Bishops White and Claggett 
alone composed the upper House, and thus it was in 
the power of Bishop White to have prevented this utter 
overthrow of a vital, cardinal principle of the Constitu- 
tion of 1785, which he had assisted in drafting. 

In the Convention of 1789, Bishops White and Sea- 
bury were the sole members of the Houi.3of Bishops, 
when the first serious abandonment of the essential 
principles of the primary Constitution occurred, and 
thus again, w r e are sorry to say, is Bishop White to be 
held responsible for the disastrous changes which were 
then effected. 

THE DECLINE OF THE CHURCH. 

So greatly had the Church declined after the un- 
happy legislation of 1 789, that in the Convention of 
1808, when the fundamental change was effected 
which threw the Church into the power of the Bishops, 
there were present but fourteen clergymen and thirteen 
laymen, with scarce a man of eminence among them ; 
in sad contrast to that remarkable and more numerous 
body of Christian patriots and divines, who framed 
that admirable Constitution, and that Protestant 
Prayer Book, upon which the Reformed Episcopal 
Church has, under Divine Providence, happily re- 
erected and restored the Church of the Fathers. 

THE INFLUENCE OF BISHOPS SEABURY AND HOBART. 

Dr. Hobart, afterwards consecrated Bishop in 1811, 
was the most able, influential, and energetic member 
of that small Convention, which surrendered the 
principle of co-ordinate lay legislation to the feudal 
principle of exclusive Divine right of the Episcopal 
Order. This sound and salutary safeguard of the 
rights of the people, affirmed and re-affirmed in three 
Conventions by Dr. White as a Presbyter, in co-opera- 
tion with the Christian statesmen of the Revolution, 
was abandoned by Bishop White under the influence of 
the stronger will and more vigorous and energetic na- 
ture of Seabury and Hobart, both honest and uncom- 
promising High Churchmen. These two prelates suc- 
ceeded in overthrowing the work of the Revolutionary 
pioneers of the Church, constituted essentially a new 
Church, and thus compelled, in less than a century, 



NOTES. 69 

a return to the original principles of their Communion, 
of those Episcopalians who desired to worship God, 
with a pure Scriptural Liturgy, and by a discipline in 
consonance with the Church in the days of the Apos- 
tles. The Reformed Episcopal Church is not a new 
sect, but the old Church revived. Its history is 
closely analogous to that of the parent Church of 
England, which at the time of the Reformation, pre- 
served its Episcopal Order, and simply returned to the 
primitive doctrines held, when Christianity was first 
planted in the Apostolic era, in Great Britain. 

REVISIONS OF THE PRAYER BOOK, PROTESTANT AND 
OTHERWISE. 

There have been eight prominent revisions of the 
Book of Common Prayer ; four in the interest of Tradi- 
tion, Ritualism, and Low Popery or Semi-Romanism ; 
four based on Holy Scripture, Spiritual Christianity, 
and Protestantism. 

The first four : the Revision of Elizabeth, 1559 ; of 
James I, 1604 ; of Charles II, 1662; of Bishop Seabury, 
1789 ; which last is the present Book of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. 

The other four: the Revision of Edward VI, 1552 ; 
of William III, 1689 ; of Bishop White and the Revolu- 
tionary statesmen, 1785 ; of Bishop Cummins, 1874; 
which is the Prayer Book of the Reformed Episcopal 
Church. 

This last Revision has had a longer life than all the 
•other Protestant revisions combined. The Reform has 
been radical, consistent, and complete, and the Book 
has come to stay. 

THE REVISIONS OF 1874 AND 1785 IDENTICAL IN 
PRINCIPLE. 

We propose to show briefly that the Book of 1874 is 
identical in principle with that of 1785, and is irrecon- 
ciliable with that of 1789, which contains the false doc- 
trines of the Revision of 1662. 

THE OMISSION OF THE TERM " PRIEST." 

First: like the Book of 1785, that of 1874 has elimi- 
nated entirely from its pages the word priest as applied 
to a human minister ; in the Prayer Books of 1552 and 
of 1559, the clergy are designated by the term minister. 



70 NOTES. 

The term "priest" was substituted for minister in 
the revision of Charles II, 1662. 

It was removed by our Revolutionary Fathers in the 
Book of 1785. It is not introduced in the Reformed 
Episcopal Book of 1874. 

Through the influence of Bishop Seabury it was re- 
inserted in the Book of 1789, and fifteen years later an 
Institution Service was added, containing the terms 
"Altar," "Sacerdotal function," Sacerdotal connex- 
ion," "Sacerdotal relation." Thus the so-called 
"Protestant Episcopal Prayer Book" has been made 
the most priestly, sacerdotal, and sacramental Liturgy 
framed since the Reformation. The Ritualism which 
has abounded, is the simple, natural, logical outcome 
of the phraseology contained in the Book. Its advo- 
cates hold the fort and can not be dislodged. 

SIMILARITY OF BAPTISMAL SERVICES. 

Secondly: The Baptismal Services of the Books of 
1785 and of 1874 are in irreconciliable antag- 
onism to those of 1662 and 1789. In the Book of 
1785, as in that of 1874, the declaration "Seeing now, 
dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerated, 
&c," is entirely omitted. 

In the Book of 1785, after the Baptism, instead of 
the words of the Book of 1789, "We yield Thee hearty 
thanks, most merciful Father, that it has pleased Thee 
to regenerate this infant with the Holy Spirit, &c," we 
have this prayer: "We yield Thee hearty thanks, most 
merciful Father, that it has pleased Thee to receive 
this infant as Thine own child by Baptism, and to in- 
corporate him into Thy Holy Church. 

In the Book of 1874, the language is: "We yield Thee 
humble thanks, O Heavenly Father, that Thou hast 
inclined us to dedicate this child to Thee in Baptism ; 
and we humbly pray that Thy grace may enable us to 
bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord, &c." 

In the Book of 1785, the Catechism and Confirmation 
Service were likewise essentially modified, and made to 
conform in doctrine to the other Scriptural alterations. 

We give the main points of difference between the 
Books of 1785 and 1874, which abjure the doctrine of 
Baptismal Regeneration ; and those of 1789 and 1662, 
which affirm that error unmistakably and designedly. 



NOTES. 71 

The two former Books have affirmed the Protestant 
and Scriptural Doctrine of Baptism: the two latter 
have retained the teaching of the Roman Catholic 
Liturgies. This is another cause of the extensive 
growth of anti-Protestant error in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. 

AS TO THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Thirdly: With respect to the Lord's Supper. There 
is an important doctrinal difference between the Books 
of 1785 and 1874, together with that of 1662; as com- 
pared with the Protestant Episcopal Book of 1789. 

In the three former are omitted what is styled the 
form of Oblation of the elements of Bread and Wine, 
which is contained in the Scottish Communion Service. 

Bishop Seabury, as we shall show more fully here- 
after, held to the doctrine that the Offering of our Lord 
Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind, was made 
especially at the time He instituted the Lord's Sup- 
per, rather than on the Cross, and therefore he in- 
sisted that the language of the Scotch Communion. 
Service, which may be thus interpreted, should be in- 
troduced into the Prayer Book of 1789. This "Invo- 
cation" and "Oblation," were purposely omitted in the 
Books of 1785 and 1874. As they are not contained in 
the English Book of 1662, the American Protestant 
Episcopal Prayer Book favors the Romish doctrine of 
the Lord's Supper more strongly than the former. So 
essential did Bishop Seabury regard these words in the 
office for Holy Communion, that, according to Bishop 
White, he refused to lead in the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper at the General Convention, when they 
were not used. Not only is the "Oblation," and the 
"Invocation" by the "Priest" omitted in the Book of 
1874, but there is appended this important Rubric: "In 
conducting this service, except when kneeling, the 
minister shall face the people." 

Moreover, another Rubric similar to that of the Book 
of 1662 is added : " The Act and Prayer of Consecration 
do not change the nature of the elements, but merely 
set them apart for a holy use ; and the reception of 
them in a kneeling posture is not an act of adoration of 
the elements." 

The Communion Service of the Book of 1789 is not 
thus guarded. 



t72 NOTES. 

The IX. Article of the R. E. Constitution reads: 
"Nothing calculated to teach— either dtrectly or 
symbolically— that the Christian Ministry ' possesses a 
Sacerdotal character, or that the Lord's Supper is a 
Sacrifice, shall ever be allowed in the Worship of this 
Church; nor shall any Communion Table be con- 
structed in the form of an altar." 

In the Reformed Episcopal Book every avenue to 
Romanism has been carefully closed. 

CHANGES IN THE ORDINAL. 

Fourthly: In the Forms of Ordination. Here is a 
marked and radical difference between the Books of 
1789 and 1874. 

There being no Bishops to confer orders, the prepara- 
tion of such forms was deferred by the members of 
the Conventions of 1785 and 1786. The doctrine was 
then established that there were no human Priests, 
nor a third order of ministers by Divine right. 

In the Prayer Book of 1789, the Primitive, Protestant 
and Scriptural principles were abandoned, and Con- 
secration and Ordination Offices prepared according to 
the Non-juring doctrines of Bishop Seabury, which 
were similar to those of Archbishop Laud. 

The Offices for the Consecration of Bisho})s and Ordi- 
dination of Priests in the Book of 1789, were framed 
on the model of the Book of 1662. This later Revision 
differed from the Reformers' Book of 1552, in that it 
made Episcopal Consecration and Ordination essential 
to the ministry, for the first time in the history of the 
Church of England. Though Bishop White and his 
co-laborers of 1785 did not hold this doctrine, it was 
inserted to reconcile Bishop Seabury and the Clergy 
of exclusive and Sacerdotal views. The term " Priest " 
was borrowed from the Book of 1662, a term which 
had been carefully excluded from the Revision of 1552, 
and from all later Revisions for over a century. 

This same term of Priest, together with the notion of 
exclusive, Episcopal, Divine right, as w T e have seen, 
was expunged by the Revolutionary Revisers of 1785, 
as it whs by Bishop Cummins, and the framers of the 
Book of 1874. 

In the Ordinal for Priests in the Protestant Episco- 
pal Prayer Book, the form is this : " Receive the Holy 
vGhost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the 



NOTES. 7S 

Church of God, now committed unto thee by the 
Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost for- 
give, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost 
retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dis- 
penser of the Word of God and of His Holy Sacra- 
ments, etc." 

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL FORM DERIVED FROM 
THE MIDDLE AGES. 

If this langnage means anything, it is that the abso- 
lution of sins is the primal work of the Protestant 
Episcopal Priest, and those who act on this principle 
are acting according to the Record. Inasmuch as this 
form was not in use till the Middle Ages, in the thir- 
teenth century, it is not wonderful that the doctrines 
of that superstitious period, connected with a human 
priesthood, a material altar, and a memorial sacrifice,. 
have largely leavened the Protestant Episcopal Ch urch- 
in the Prayer Book of 1874, the form of Ordination 
reads: "Take thou Authority to execute the office 
of a Presbyter in the Church of God, now committed 
unto thee; and be thou a faithful Dispenser of the 
Word of God and of His Holy Ordinances, etc." 

In the Book of 1789 are clearly contained the doc- 
trines of an exclusive Episcopal Ordination; of Priestly 
functions; of tactual Succession; and of transmitted 
grace. In the Book of 1874, these errors are expressly, 
and repeatedly denied. 

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES. 

In her Statement of Principles, the Reformed Epis- 
copal Church declares: "This Church recognizes and 
adheres to Episcopacy, not as of Divine right, but as a 
very ancient and desirable form of Church polity." 

She " condemns and rejects the iollowing erroneous. 
and strange doctrines as contrary to God's Word : 

"First, That the Church of Christ exists only in one 
order or form of Ecclesiastical polity ; 

11 Second, That Christian ministers are 'priests' in 
another than that in which all believers are a 'royal 
priesthood;' 

u Third, That the Lord's Table is an altar on which 
the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ is offered, 
anew to the Father ; 

4 ' Four th, That the presence of Christ in the Lord's 



'74 NOTES. 

Supper is a presence in the elements of the Bread and 
Wine ; 

"Fifth, That Regeneration is inseparably connected 
with Baptism." 

THE TWENTY-FOURTH ARTICLE. 

And still further to emphasize her rejection of these 
Medieval errors which have so sadly corrupted the 
Church, she declares in her XXIV. Article: "That 
doctrine of 'Apostolic Succession,' by which it is 
taught that the ministry of the Christian Church must 
be derived through a series of uninterrupted ordina- 
tions, whether by tactual succession or otherwise, and 
that without the same there can be no valid ministry, 
no Christian Church, and no due ministration of 
Baptism and the Lord's Supper, is wholly rejected as 
unscriptural, and productive of great mischief. 

This Church values its historic ministry, but recog- 
nizes and honors as equally valid, the ministry of other 
Churches, even as God the Holy Ghost has accompanied 
their work with demonstration and power." 

Moreover, by the R. E. Canons it is ordered, that a 
Presbyter from another Church may be received with- 
out reordination; pulpit exchanges with ministers of 
Evangelical Churches are allowed; letters dismissory 
are given to Bishops and Presbyters desiring to change 
their ecclesiastical relations; and parishes may be 
formed without the consent of neighboring pastors and 
congregations. 

In the Protestant Episcopal Church, on the other 
hand, reordination is required of all adhering non- 
Episcopal ministers, while Roman Priests are admitted 
without it; the pulpit is barred to all without Episcopal 
orders; all who leave its ministry for other Churches 
are deposed; and the assent of a majority of neighbor- 
ing rectors is required, before a new parish can be 
formed. 

So thoroughly antagonistic are the two Churches in 
their principles and practices. 

THE MISSION OF THE REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Thus has the Reformed Episcopal Church been loyal 
to the Truth of Holy Scripture, and to the doctrine and 
practice of the Primitive Church. 

Thus does sh^ stand on the foundation of the martyrs 



NOTES. 75 

•of Edward VI. ; of the Reformers under William III. ; 
of the Revolutionary Founders of American Episcopacy. 
In Divine Providence, to this Church has been com- 
mitted the noble and necessary work of restoring in 
this age, the principles from which the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, in 1789, radically diverged; a divergence 
which for near a century has grown wider and wider ; 
and has compelled at last the sacrifices and toils, by 
which, through the manly courage and enlightened 
faith of Bishop Cummins and his co-laborers, the grand 
and holy work has been successfully and permanently 
inaugurated. 

CAUSES OF THE OPPOSITION TO BISHOP SEABURY. 

It has been shown that the overthrow of the Primary 
Constitution and Prayer Book of the Divines and 
Statesmen of the Revolution, framed in 1785 and 1786, 
was due mainly to Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut. 

The strong opposition to this Prelate manifested by 
Bishop Provoost, John Jay, James Duane, and others 
at that period, has been alluded to. 

We propose to give the reasons why these eminent 
Episcopalians of the Revolutionary period endeavored, 
to prevent an ecclesiastical union with this energetic, 
non-juring Bishop. 

BISHOP PROVOOST ASSAILED FOR HIS OPPOSITION. 

This opposition was very plainly expressed. Bishop 
Provoost has been severely handled in the "Church 
Review," and by various writers, for the part he took in 
the matter. Referring to a correspondence of the dis- 
tinguished Granville Sharp with Dr. Manning, an 
eminent Baptist, and Bishop Provoost, with respect to 
the non-recognition of Bishop Seabury 's Consecration, 
this ''Review" remarks : " It was the old scene at Jeru- 
salem re-enacted, Herod and Pilate— the determined 
dissenter and the jealous Churchman— were made 
friends in their common antipathy to one both innocent 
and unsuspecting." Bishop Provoost is charged with 
being "unkind," " discourteous," "bitter," "implac- 
able," "malicious," "atroubler in Israel," " low in 
morals and belief," on account of his manly, conscien- 
tious effort to preserve the infant, Protestant Episco- 
pal Church from the dangerous, semi-Romish, and 
anti-Republican principles of the able and adroit 



76 NOTES. 

leader of the Tory clergy of the Revolution. See Am. 
Quar. Church Review for July, 1862, April 1863. The 
International Review, April, 1881, p. 324, states : "Bishop 
W. S. Perry, of Iowa, the laborious, and probably in 
the view of some of his Communion, the disagreeably 
candid historian of the Colonial Church, has put into 
print a pamphlet containing such a severe judgment of 
the first Bishop of JSTew York as to leave his readers to 
infer that Provoost's ' consecration ' did not reach to 
his character. " Beardsley's History of theP. E. Church 
in Connecticut, contains the usual High Church de- 
preciation of this accomplished and patriotic friend and 
pastor of Jay, Duane, the Livingstons, Hamilton, 
Rufus King, and other great statesmen of the Revolu- 
tion. 

VINDICATION OF BISHOP PROVOOST. 

The succeeding history of the P. E. Church furnishes 
ample justification for the warnings, and precautionary 
measures of Bishop Provoost. 

Cf his exalted character and services, in addition to 
the full and varied testimony we have previously pre- 
sented, there is ample vindication in the resolutions 
passed by the Convention of his Diocese in this lan- 
guage : u Justly reposing the highest confidence in your 
integrity and piety, your lcve cf peace and order, and 
your unremitted endeavors for the advancement cf 
true religion and virtue, we rejoice that the distin- 
guished honor cf filling one of the first Episcopal Chairs in 
these United States hath been conferred on a character so 
truly amiable, and w r e trust that we, and those whom 
we represent, shall never fail to render you all due 
support, respect and reverence * * * an example for 
our imitation, and an ornament to our holy religion.' r ' 
See Berrian's Hist, of Trinity Church, p. £07. 

Well would it be for the detainers of this departed 
Christian Bishop if they might hand down to their 
posterity such a testimonial from such a constituency. 

As Bishop Provoost opposed tl:o election of Dr. 
Hobart to the Episcopate en much the same grounds as 
he did union with Bishop Seabury, much cf the abuse 
he has received can be readily accounted for. 

PLAIN LANGUAGE OF BISHOP PHOVOOST. 

Bishop Provoost saw the impending peril, and labored 
earnestly to prevent the catastrophe. He writes to 



NOTES. 77 

Bishop White, after the Convention of 1785, with ref- 
erence to the applications for Episcopal Consecration : 
" I expect no obstruction to our application but what 
may arise from the intrigues of the ^on-Juring Bishop 
of Connecticut, who a few days since paid a visit to 
this State, notwithstanding he incurred the guilt of 
misprision of treason, and was liable to confinement for 
life for doing so * * *. While he was there, a piece ap- 
peared in a paper under Kivington's direction, pretend- 
ing to give an account of the late Convention, but 
replete with falsehood and prevarication, and evidently 
intended to create a prejudice against our transactions 
both in England and America." Later he writes : " If 
we may judge from appearances, Dr. Cebra and Lis 
friends are using every art to prevent the success of 
our application to the English prelates." The next 
year Bishop Provoost writes : " As the General Con- 
vention did not think proper to acknowledge Dr. 
Cebra as a Bishop, much less as a Bishop of our 
Church, it would be highly improper for us, in our 
private capacities, to give any sanction to his Ordi- 
nations. It would also be an insult upon the Church 
and the truly venerable prelates to whom we are now 
making application for the Succession. For my own 
part, I carry the matter still further, and as a friend to 
the liberties of mankind, should be extremely sorry 
that the conduct of my brethren here should tend to the 
resurrection of the sect of !N"on-Jurors (nearly buried in 
oblivion), whose slavish and absurd tenets were a dis- 
grace to humanity, and God grant that they may never 
be cherished in America, which, as my native Country, 
I wish may always be sacred to Liberty, both civil and 
religious." February 24th, 1789, Bishop Provoost 
writes thus plainly to Bishop Seabury : "An invitation 
to the Church in that State (Connecticut) to meet us in 
General Convention, I conceive to be neither necessary 
nor proper ; not necessary because I am informed that 
they have already appointed two persons to attend the 
next General Convention without our invitation ; nor 
proper because it is so publicly known that they have 
adopted a form of Church government which renders 
them inadmissible as members of the Convention or 
union." " Cebra " is stated to be one of the forms of 
the family name. A resolution offered by Bishop Pro- 
voost in the Convention of 1785, and passed, was as 



7o NOTES. 

follows : " That the persons appointed to represent this 
Church be instructed not to consent to any acts that 
may imply the validity of Dr. Seabury's ordinations." 

ACTIVE OPPOSITION OF JAY AND DUANE. 

The opposition of John Jay and James Duane to the 
views of Bishop Seabury, and to ecclesiastical connec- 
tion with him, was equally determined and well known. 
When the General Convention of 1789 was about to 
meet, while Jay and Duane were wardens of Trinity 
Church, New York, the former introduced, at a meet- 
ing of the Yestry, a resolution instructing the deputies 
to General Convention to oppose every alteration in the 
Constitution of 1785, which denied to the laity a co- 
ordinate power of legislation with the clergy. 

When the General Convention had surrendered to 
Bishop Seabury and his friends, and a motion was made 
to agree to the new feudal Constitution, Jay and 
Duane voted to reject it, together with Mr. Farquhar, 
another distinguished patriot, and Anthony L. Bleecker. 

The Yestry being now mainly composed of the 
returned opponents of the Revolution, the resolution 
was carried, and these wise and eminent patriots failed 
in their efforts to save the Church of their ancestors. 

John Jay was an intelligent and consistent opponent 
of the principles of Bishop Seabury and of Bishop 
Ilobart to the day of his death. Thirty years after his 
earnest efforts to preserve his Church from the blun- 
dering and pernicious legislation by which its hold upon 
the confidence and support of the American people was 
so sadly and needlessly lost, he wrote a letter to the 
corporation of Trinity Church, of which he had been 
the most illustrious member in an era of great men. 

JAY ON APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 

He is presenting his reason why the Institution Ser- 
vice would not be allowed in the parish. After show- 
ing its "unconstitutional assumptions of power, an 
insuperable objection," he proceeds to condemn the 
term "ministers of Apostolic Succession," as therein 
contained. He remarks: "If it be asked, whether 
the ministers of the Calvinistic and other Churches are 
of Apostolic Succession, it is answered by all our 
bishops and clergy that they are not. It follows, 
therefore, of necessary consequence, that our bishops 



NOTES. 7.) 

and clergy and their congregation, when they offer up 
their prayer to Almighty God, must offer it with the 
meaning and understanding that the gracious promise 
mentioned in it is confined to Episcopalian ministers, 
and therefore excludes the ministers of all other de- 
nominations of Christians." 

It is a marked coincidence, that this extreme Sacer- 
dotal Institution Service was framed by a divine who 
had received his principles and his orders, like Bishop 
Seabury, from the Non-juring Bishops of Scotland. 
Thus another sad legacy has descended from the same 
fountain of ecclesiastical bigotry and error to corrupt 
and distract the Church. 

Referring to the divine blessings which had for cen- 
turies been distributed so copiously to Churches not 
Episcopalian, Mr. Jay most sagely writes: "It may 
not be unworthy of remark, that as a prophecy is best 
understood from its completion, so the manner in 
which a Divine promise is performed, affords the best 
exhibition of its true and original meaning." He al- 
ludes to our Saviour's words: "Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world ;" which are re- 
stricted in their meaning by Roman Catholics and 
many Episcopalians, to their respective denominations. 

We cannot refrain from quoting from the conclud- 
ing words of this memorable letter of this pre-eminent 
Christian statesman, whose views were identical with 
those taught by the Reformed Episcopal Church. 
They are like a legacy from one of the old prophets. 

A MEMORABLE INDICTMENT OF HIGH CHURCH EPIS- 
COPACY. 

"For a considerable time past we have observed a 
variety of circumstances connected with Church 
affairs which, on being combined and compared one 
with the other, justify inferences which, in our opin- 
ion, are exceedingly interesting, not only to the rights 
of the laity, but also to our churches in general, and 
to yours in particular. We allude to the gradual in- 
troduction and industrious propagation of High 
Church doctrines. Of late years, they have frequently 
been seen lifting up their heads and appearing in 
places where their presence was neither necessary nor 
expected. There never was a time when those doc- 
trines promoted peace on earth or good will among 



80 NOTES. 

men. Originating under the auspices and in the days 
of darkness and despotism, they patronized darkness 
and despotism, down to the Reformation. Ever en- 
croaching on the rights of governments and people, 
they have constantly found it convenient to incorpor- 
ate as far as possible, the claims of the clergy with the 
principles and practice of religion ; and their advocates 
have not ceased to preach for Christian doctrines, the- 
commandments of men. 

"To you it cannot be necessary to observe, that High 
Church doctrines are not accommodated to the state of 
society, nor to the tolerant principles, nor to the ardent 
love of liberty which prevail in our country. It is 
well known that our Church was formed after the 
Revolution, with an eye to what was then believed to 
be the truth and simplicity of the Gospel ; and there 
appears to be some reason to regret that the motives 

which then governed have since been less operative 
* * * * 

"Whatever may be the result, we shall have 
the satisfaction of reflecting that we have done 
our duty, in thus explicitly protesting against meas- 
ures and proceedings which, if persevered in, must and 
will, sooner or later, materially affect the tranquility 
and welfare of the Church." Jay's Life, vol. 1, p. 
439-42. 

Mr. Jay believed in Episcopacy in the primitive 
simplicity and purity which he had vainly sought to 
impress permanently upon his Church in its early 
American history. 

He writes, p. 435: "We believe that Episcopacy was of 
Apostolic institution, but we do not believe in the va- 
rious High Church doctrines and prerogatives which 
art and ambition, triumphing over credulity and weak- 
ness, have annexed to it." 

MR. JAY AN ANTAGONIST OF BISHOP HOBART. 

With such principles we are not surprised that 
Mr. Jay vigorously opposed the views and measures 
of Bishop Seabury, as he did for thirty years those of 
Bishop Hobart, who held to equally extreme and dan- 
gerous notions of Episcopal power and prerogative. 

Thus, when Bishop Hobart assailed the American 
Bible Society, inasmuch as he disapproved of Episco- 
palians uniting with Christians of other names in ex- 



NOTES. 81 

tending the Gospel ; Mr. Jay, as the foremost champion 
of enlightened and tolerant Protestant Episcopacy, re- 
peatedly accepted the Presidency of the same Society, 
and vindicated it in his addresses against the assaults 
of its bigoted adversaries. Unfortunately the warn- 



A SIMILAR REBUKE FROM THE SON OF JOHN JAY. 

That his fears were realized, is seen in the letter of 
his distinguisned son, Hon. William Jay, written to 
the rector of Trinity Church, a generation later, in 
1856. He says in his published letter, p. 12: "To 
those who embrace the Church principles of Trinity, 
the very term Protestant is an offense. * * * * You 
know the lamentations which have been uttered over 
our uncatholic designation. The 'sound Church prin- 
ciples' which you tell us have at 'all times' been man- 
fully maintained by Trinity, have in latter years 
brought forth their legitimate fruit, now known as 
Puseyism. This fruit has indeed wrought sore mala- 
dies, wild hallucinations, and wondrous mutations, in 
those who have partaken of it. 

"It has metamorphosed one of our rectors into a 
Popish Bishop, and one of our Bishops into a lay Pro- 
fessor of a Jesuit college. It has driven the son of 
another Bishop from the ministry of the Church, and 
sent him an apostate on a pilgrimage to the Roman 
Pontiff, and — but I forbear. It is needless to dwell on 
the distractions, the heart-burnings, the mummeries, 
the puerilities, the symbolisms, and the awful aposta- 
cies resulting from the taste of this baneful and intoxi- 
cating fruit." 

THE church's return to primitive purity of 

DOCTRINE. 

The evil leaven introduced into the Prayer Book and 
Constitution of 1789, blossomed and fruited, until its 
direful results within a century, compelled the return 
to the original principles of the Fathers ; and with the 
blessing of God, was followed, through the agency of 
Bishop Cummins, by the free, enlightened Constitu- 
tion, and the Protestant, Scriptural and Primitive 
Prayer Book of 1874 of the Reformed Episcopal 
Church. 



82 NOTES. 

THE ERRONEOUS DOCTRINES OF BISHOP SEABURY. 

We desire it to be understood, that in our examination 
of the relation of Bishop Seabury to the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, we do not desire to detract from his 
estimable traits of character, his earnestness of purpose,. 
or his mental endowments. These we fully acknowl- 
edge, as we do those of his worthy Revolutionary 
contemporary, Archbishop Can oil, a divine equally 
esteemed. At the same time, we are bound in the in- 
terests of historical truth, and of sound religion, to 
show how the false opinions and reactionary measures- 
of this able, Non-juring clergyman, were substituted 
in the Protestant Episcopal Prayer Book for the antag- 
onistic, Protestant, and Scriptural principles of the 
Revolutionary Statesmen and Divines who framed the 
Constitution and Liturgy of 1785. 

BISHOP SEABURY 'S ERROR WITH RESPECT TO THE 
LORD'S SUPPER. 

From his sermon on the Holy Eucharist, Vol. I, we 
quote : " It being admitted that Christ did offer Him- 
self—His natural body and blood— His whole humanity 
to God, a sacrifice for the sin of the world ; and having 
been shown that He did not offer Himself on the Cross,, 
but was, in everything that related to His Crucifixion, 
merely passive; it may be asked, when did He offer 
Himself? I answer, in the Institution of the Holy 
Eucharist * * *. As He could not w T ound and kill His 
own natural body, and shed His own blood, He made 
this offering in a mystery, that is, under the emblems of 
bread and wine * * *. The truth of this position, that 
Christ, under the emblems or symbols of bread and 
wine in the Holy Eucharist, offered or gave His natural 
body and blood for the sin of the world will further 
appear, etc. It now having been proved that Christ 
did, at the Institution of the Eucharist, offer His 
natural body and blood to God, an expiatory sacrifice 
for sin, under the symbols and representation of bread 
broken and wine poured out, and consecrated by bless- 
ing and thanksgiving, etc. * * *. It appears, therefore, 
that the Eucharist is * * * a true and proper sacrifice 
commemorative of the original sacrifice, and death of 
Christ for our deliverance from sin and death — a 
memorial made before God to put Him in mind,. 



NOTES. 83 

etc. * * *. The elements being thus made authorita- 
tive representations or symbols of Christ's crucified 
body and blood, are in a proper capacity to be offered to 
God as the great and acceptable sacrifice of the Chris- 
tian Church. Accordingly the oblation, which is the 
highest, most solemn, and proper act of Christian 
worship is then immediately made." pp. 150-9. 

The doctrine, that the propitiatory sacrifice of our 
Lord was made on the occasion of the Institution of 
the Holy Communion, and not on the Cross, is here dis- 
tinctly and repeatedly asserted, 

These words, and many more of like meaning, suf- 
ficiently prove that Bishop Seabury's views were in 
direct antagonism to those of the English Keformers r 
and plainly contain the germ of Popery. 

They prove also, that Bishop Provoost and others were 
justified in their stern opposition to the influence of 
such anti-Protestant teaching. 

BISHOP SEABURY'S VIEW OF THE EFFECTS OF 
BAPTISM. * 

" The power of God's grace has been supposed always 
to accompany the due celebration of His ordinances. 
Baptism has ever been regarded, not only as the sign 
and seal of regeneration, but as the means by which 
the regenerating influences of the Holy Ghost have been 
conveyed, and therefore it is called the washing of 
regeneration * * *. This baptism our Saviour trans- 
ferred into His Church, and made it the sacrament of 
initiation into it, and the medium of that new and 
spiritual birth, without which no one can enter into 
the kingdom of God, any more than he can enter into 
this world any other way than by his natural birth 
* * '*. If the blessing of Christ did procure for those 
infants the grace and Holy Spirit of God, where is the 
absurdity of believing that baptism by Christ's appoint- 
ment, and performed by His authorized minister, should 
procure the grace of regeneration and the Holy Spirit 
for those infants who come to it by the faith of their 
parents?" Vol. I. 21. Ill, 121. 

BISHOP SEABURY'S VIEWS OF THE MINISTRY. 

"St. Paul's says: 'We Christians have an altar, 
whereof they have no right to eat which serve the 
tabernacle.' Now, where there is an altar, there must 



8x NOTES. 

be a sacrifice, and a priest to offer it. And as Christ's 
Apostles were at its institution, authorized by Him to 
oiler the Christian sacrifice of bread and wine, no doubt 
Cdii remain of their being the priests of the Christian 
Church in the most proper sense * * *. The adminis- 
tration of the sacraments has been proved to belong 
exclusively to the ministers of Christ in virtue of His 
commission to them. They are therefore dispensers of 
those gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit which accom- 
pany those ordinances. The power of administration 
depending so directly upon the commission of Christ to 
His Apostles, he who holds no part of it by an uninter- 
rupted succession of ordinations can have no pretense 
to meddle with them * * *. The Scriptures having 
pointed out no other way of communicating this au- 
thority, but by the hands of the Apostles of the Church 
— they, I mean, who have succeeded the original 
Apostles in the power of ordination and government — 
by them only can this authority be now imparted * * *. 
Since the Holy Apostles did, in obedience to Christ, 
and under the direction of the Holy Ghost, transmit to 
others the powers they received from Him, constitut- 
ing bishops, presbyters and deacons, as three orders of 
ministers in His Church; it is the duty of all Christians 
to submit to that government which they, the Apostles, 
have instituted, and not to run after the new-fangled 
scheme of parochial episcopacy, of which the Bible 
knows nothing, and of which the Christian Church 
knew nothing till a little more than two centuries 
ago." Sermons I. 21, 62, 88. 

Sufficient has been quoted to show how widely Bishop 
Seabury differed in his view of the Lord's Supper, 
Baptism, and the Ministry from the teachings of the 
Prayer Book of 1785, and why Bishop Provoost, Jay, 
and other earnest Protestants, depreciated the baleful 
influence of such doctrines upon their infant Com- 
munion. 

The doctrines of this eccentric divine with respect to 
the Church are correspondingly narrow, unreasonable, 
and unscriptural. 

A FURTHER OBJECTION. 

Moreover, the extremely offensive language of Bishop 
Seabury, with respect to Christians of other folds, 
created a natural and intense opposition to him. With 



NOTES. 85 

respect to the Methodists, he writes to Dr. Smith, 
u the plea of the Methodists is something like impu- 
dence. Mr. Wesley is only a presbyter, and all his 
ordinations Presbyterian, and in direct opposition to 
the Church of England. And they can have no 
pretense for calling themselves Churchmen till they 
return to the Unity of the Church, which they have 
unreasonably, unnecessarily, and wickedly broken, 
by their separation and schism." Bishop White's 
Mem. p. 287. 

SEABURY ON CALVINISTS. 

Calvin and the Presbyterians were especially obnox- 
ious to him. He writes : " Calvin was undoubtedly a 
man of abilities, and his whole conduct shows that he 
was a man of an assuming, intrepid, and vindictive 
temper. He busied himself in everything which con- 
cerned the Reformation, and with everybody who had 
any influence in it. At last he fixed himself at the 
head of the Protestants and became their Pope. Little 
was done, little was taught but as Calvin liked and 
advised * * *. Talk with a Calvinist on religion, and 
begin where you will, you will soon get into election 
and reprobation and irresistible grace. You would 
think religion consisted of nothing else * * *. Predesti- 
nation is to the mind what the jaundice is to the body. 
The whole Bible appears tinctured with a sickly, 
yellow hue, when the predestinarian looks into it, 
especially if he be of a morose and vindictive temper, as 
most commonly is the case." Sermons, vol. II. 234-98. 

SEABURY ON WHITFIELD. 

When the apostolic Whitfield, who crossed the 
ocean to this Continent seven times to preach the Gos- 
pel, came to his vicinity, Dr. Seabury was greatly 
troubled. He writes: l 'We have had a long visit from 
Mr. Whitfield in this Colony where he has preached 
frequently, especially in the city of New York, and in 
this island, and I am sorry to say he has had more 
influence than formerly, and I fear has done a great 
deal of mischief. His tenets and methods of preach- 
ing have been adopted by many of the dissenting 
teachers, and this town (Jamaica) in particular has a 
continual, I had almost said a daily, succession of stroll- 
ing preachers and exhorters." Again he writes: 



86 NOTES. 

"Without Bishops the Church can not nourish in 
America, and unless the Church be well supported and 
prevail, this whole Continent will be overrun with in- 
fidelity and deism, Methodism and New Light, with 
every species of skepticism and enthusiasm, and with- 
out a Bishop on the spot I fear it will be impossible to- 
keep the Church herself pure and undefiled." Doc. 
Hist. N. Y., IV. 327-30. 

The ten Tory clergymen who secretly sent Dr. Sea- 
bury across the water for consecration, appear to have- 
been as strongly impressed with the impending danger 
to religion, for they appeal for Seabury's consecration 
on this ground: "that the Church of God might not 
become extinct here." On this language, the Interna- 
tional Review for July, 1881, p. 327 in an article on Bishop 
Seabury, remarks: "The vitality and all the effective 
benedictive agency of the Christian religion on charac- 
ter, conduct and human life, and the institutions of a 
Continent, are made dependent upon a subtile and 
unique virtue running through an unbroken line of 
men, like electricity on a continuous wire, conveying 
authority from one to another by a touch." 

This is a strikingly correct definition of the Apos- 
tolic Succession chimera, so widely prevalent in the 
Protestant Episcopal Communion. 

BISHOP SEABURY ON THE POSITION OF THE LAITY. 

But there was no view of Bishop Seabury more repel- 
lant to the men who had fought through the Revolu- 
tion, and framed the Prayer Book of 1785 on the princi- 
ples of William III and his noble Bishops, than that re- 
specting the position of the laity in the Church. It 
was truly, in the language of Bishop Provoost, an 
"absurd and slavish tenet." 

He starts with the theory that laymen have no Scrip- 
tural right to partake of the Holy Communion. He 
seems not to have been familiar with St. Paul's first let- 
ters to the Corinthians, where not only is the right of 
the laity to this ordinance established, but inasmuch 
as that Church appears to have had no pastor at that 
period, the right of a layman to administer the rite in 
an emergency, can be reasonably inferred. Bishop Sea- 
bury says, vol. I, p. 146: "No Church that I know of 
excludes the laity from the Communion; though (the 
practice of the primitive Church excepted,) they have- 



NOTES. 87 

no direct authority for their admission. All that can 
be alleged from Scripture, in favor of lay communion, 
may be explained away in the same manner in which 
the Presbyterians explain away Episcopal government, 
&c." 

NO AUTHORITY FROM THE PEOPLE. 

On p. 40, he remarks: "With respect to the govern- 
ment of the Church, I must as a faithful minister of 
Christ, and a governor in His Church, bear my testi- 
mony against the position that ecclesiastical or spiritual 
powers are in any sense derived from the people, or from, 
any human authority.'''' 

The Bishop appears to have forgotten that several of 
the most noted Bishops of antiquity were appointed by 
the people, without the co-operation of the clergy, and 
in some cases, apparently without receiving consecra- 
tion. Chrysostom, Ambrose, Martin, Eustatius, 
Eraclius and Miletus, are noted instances. See Col- 
man, Christ. Antiq. p. 67. 

Among other extravagant opinions of this prelate 
was that the appointment of pastors be confirmed by 
the Bishop; that it was his prerogative to prepare 
the Liturgy for his Diocese; that when our Saviour 
used the expression, "Hear the Church," he had refer- 
ence to the governors of the Church — See pp. 47, 75. In- 
deed, the word "Church" seemed to be in Seabury's. 
mind almost identical with "the clergy." 

LAYMEN UNAUTHORIZED TO LEGISLATE. 

It is not wonderful that he was totally opposed to the 
admission of the laity to Convention, with the privi- 
lege of legislating, and much less to their possession of 
co-ordinate power. On this point he was in direct an- 
tagonism to the Kevolutionary statesmen. Yet Sea- 
bury, by the weak compliance of Bishop White, Dr. 
Smith, and others, obtained a complete triumph over 
all opposition. Dr. Hawks in his comment on Article 
III, Const. P. E. Church, says: "In the General Con- 
vention of September, 1789, Bishop Seabury with the 
churches under his care came into the union, but not 
until a change had been made in this Article. They 
made it a condition that this article should be so modi- 
fied 'as to declare explicitly the rights of the Bishops, 
when sitting in a separate house to originate and pro- 



'88 NOTES. 

pose acts for the concurrence of the other house of 
Convention; and to negative such acts proposed by the 
other house as they may disapprove.' This modifica- 
tion was agreed to, and thus to Bishop Seabury belongs 
the merit of having made the Bishops an equal and co- 
ordinate power in the work of our general and ecclesi- 
astical legislation." 

THE PREDOMINATING INFLUENCE OF THE CLERGY 
CONFIRMED. 

Thus, instead of giving a co-ordinate power to the 
laity as representing the great body of the Church, the 
legislative power of the clergy was more than duplica- 
ted. A vote by orders was allowed the clergy in the 
lower house at all times, and if the clergy were de- 
feated, the question must then run the gauntlet of the 
House of Bishops, and by a simple majority in that 
body of overpowering influence, the unanimous 
voice of the laity, together with that of the clergy, 
might be smothered, the House of Bishops at the same 
time sitting with dosed doors. In this disastrous and 
indefensible erection of a legislative body analogous to 
the English House of Lords, but with greater legislative 
privilege and power, having a mysterious, undefined, 
exclusive prerogative, and having a life tenure, 
none of the great Revolutionary statesmen had a hand. 
The work of Jay and Duane; Peters and Shippen; 
Page and Pinckney; Brearley and Griffin; grand 
Christian statesmen and heroes, was overthrown by men 
of smaller make. It has required the disastrous experi- 
ence of near a century to undo the work of Seabury, 
and to enable Bishop Cummins to re-erect the Church 
of the Revolution, of the Reformation, of the Apostles, 
on its ancient foundations of Scriptural Truth, and 
Ecclesiastical Freedom. 

MINOR ECCENTRICITIES OF BISHOP SEABURY. 

We have but space to enumerate among the further 
-eccentricities of this prelate, his claim, as the preroga- 
tive of a Bishop, to confer the degree of D. D.: his oc- 
casional practice of wearing a mitre as a badge of 
office, and of signing his name as Samuel, Connecticut, 
Ac, in imitation of the feudal custom of the English 
prelates of the House of Lords. His expressed prefer- 
ence for the first and half reformed Book of Edward 



NOTES. 89> 

VI, to the later Kevision of 1552, of the Reformers; in 
which he has now many Protestant Episcopal imita- 
tors; coupled with other mediaeval Non-juring senti- 
ments, created a wide and just suspicion as to his want 
of sympathy with the established Evangelical doctrines. 
of the English Reformation. Sermons I, p. 58; II, 47. 

THE OPPONENTS OF BISHOP SEABUEY FULLY 
VINDICATED. 

As men faithful to the truth of Scripture, to the Re- 
formed Religion, and to Religious and Civil Freedom r 
Bishop Provoost and John Jay, with other enlightened 
and liberty-loving Episcopalians, were compelled to 
earnestly oppose his connection with their Church, as 
one of its Bishops. They felt assured that his eccen- 
tricities and extravagances of doctrine, in addition to 
other valid objections, would be pernicious and de- 
structive to the infant Church, in leading minds into 
erroneous and unsafe views, and in raising obstacles to 
its growth of an insuperable character. The present 
state of the Protestant Episcopal Church with respect 
to sympathy with mediaeval doctrine and its allowance 
of Semi-Romish rites; the predominating influence and 
authority of the name and opinions of Bishop Seabury, 
the centennial of whose consecration is now being com- 
memorated with much eclat throughout that Commu- 
nion; furnishes an ample vindication of their wisdom, 
and faithfulness to the Truth, to the mind of 
every unprejudiced, independent, patriotic, American 
Christian. 

"Distance may lend enchantment to the view." We 
trust, however, that these facts and authorities, which 
in the interest of Truth we have here presented, may 
serve to open the eyes, and clear the vision of some 
who are dazzled by the glare of this Ignis Fatuus of an 
imaginary, mysterious, undefined, exclusive Divine 
right, in a fancied third order of Bishops in the Christ- 
ian Ministry ; may free some souls from their uncon- 
scious subjection to the Traditions and Command- 
ments of men, and may lead them into the enjoyment 
of the whole Truth. 

POLITICAL OBJECTIONS TO BISHOP SEABURY. 

In addition to the objections made to Bishop Seabury 
on account of his unsound and extravagant doctrines 



'90 NOTES. 

and eccentric ideas, there was a hostile feeling exten- 
sively felt towards him on account of his active parti- 
sanship during the Revolutionary War, in opposition 
to the measures of Congress, Inhere were English 
rectors and missionaries who held to the doctrine of 
passive obedience, who yet quietly and devotedly ful- 
filled the duties of their calling during this stormy 
period, and were greatly respected. Such were Dr. 
Bass, in Massachusetts, and Dr. Beach in New Jersey. 
In Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey there was 
scarcely an Episcopal clergyman, and comparatively 
few laymen, of that Communion, who sided with the 
Colonists. This is evident from the letter of Dr. Charles 
Inglis, Rector of Trinity Church, New York, on the 
State of the Church, written October, 1776. 

He says : " I have the pleasure to assure you that all the 
Society's Missionaries, without excepting one, in New 
Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and as far as I can 
learn, in the other New England Colonies, have proved 
themselves faithful, loyal subjects in these trying times; 
and have to the utmost of their power opposed the 
spirit of disaffection and rebellion, which has involved 
this Continent in the greatest calamities. I must add 
that all the other clergy of our Church in the above 
Colonies, though not in the Society's service, have ob- 
served the same line of conduct." 

THE PRESBYTERIAN CLERGY SUSTAIN CONGRESS. 

On the other hand he says of " the Presbyterian min- 
isters :" " I do not know one of them, nor have I been 
able, after strict inquiry, to hear of any who did not by 
preaching and every effort in their power, promote all 
the measures of Congress, however extravagant." 
" The present rebellion is certainly one of the most 
causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever dis- 
graced any country ; a rebellion marked with peculiarly 
aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude 
* * * very few of the laity (members of our Church) 
who were respectable, or men of property, have joined 
the rebellion." The general state of the Episcopal 
mind is evident from this document, and the part 
taken at the North, by that Denomination with respect 
to the Revolution. See Doc. His. N. York, IV. 1049-66. 

Dr. Inglis states that the clergy not being allowed to 
pray for the King, refused to hold public service, and 



NOTES. 91 

shut up their churches. This was universal in Con- 
necticut, New Jersey and New York, except when 
protected by English bayonets ; and in Pennsylvania, 
except in Philadelphia, and in one or two missions. 
All who wished to worship God in public were conse- 
quently compelled to attend the Non-Episcopal 
Churches. 

When the American Army entered New York, Dr. 
Inglis writes : " I shut up the churches." 

After the disastrous Battle of Long Island, when 
New York was abandoned, and the Dutch Re- 
formed Churches filled by the Tories with American 
prisoners, who were treated with savage barbarity, Dr. 
Inglis writes: "I opened one of the churches, and 
solemnized Divine Service, when all the inhabitants 
gladly attended, and joy was lighted up in every 
countenance on the restoration of our public worship ; 
for very few remained but such as were members of 
our Church." 

SEABURY A GUIDE TO GENERAL CLINTON. 

Dr. Seabury was now in New York acting as Chap- 
lain to the British forces. He preached a sermon to 
stimulate the army against the rebels, which was 
printed by the Governor, and widely scattered in both 
countries. In April, 1775, with others, he had signed 
a protest in which he declared his " honest abhorrence 
of all unlawful Congresses and Committees," and de- 
termination " at the hazard of our lives and properties 
to support the King and Constitution." 

In Hamilton's Life by his son, there is presented an- 
other reason for the popular odium against Dr. Sea- 
bury. It was the authorship of Tracts marked by 
great ability and asperity against the popular cause. 

"In a neighboring Colony the exasperation rose so 
high, that at a meeting of the County, the pamphlets 
were tarred and feathered, and nailed to the pillory 
amid the shouts of the people. * * * The efforts to 
introduce episcopacy into America were recurred to, 
and the abject devotion displayed by some of the cleri- 
cal dependents of the Crown, and their unguarded 
avowal of their sentiments, increased the odium." It 
was proposed by some "that author and publisher 
should be indicted for treasonable designs." Vol. I. p. 



92 NOTES. 

28. The Tracts were the joint productions of Dr. Sea- 
bury and Rev. Isaac Wilkins. 

But what made Seabury the most obnoxious 
of all the Episcopal clergy was the active part 
he took in assisting General Clinton in his 
Campaigns. In the Doc. Hist. New York, IV. p. 
1063, we read: "Mr. Seabury considered it his most 
prudent course to close his church, 'as there could be 
neither prayers nor sermon till he could pray for the 
King.' On the retreat of the American Army, after 
the Battle of Long Island, Mr. S. withdrew within the 
British lines, where (Hawkins says) he was very useful 
to General Clinton, whom he furnished with plans and 
maps of the roads and rivers in the county of West- 
chester, which could not but be highly serviceable." 

The same statement may be found in Reed's life of 
General Reed, II, 170. "The established Church and 
its clergy were, it may be concluded, no favorites in 
this part of the United States. They were objects of 
ill-concealed enmity, which neither the unquestioned 
patriotism of a portion of the laity, nor Dr. White's 
republicanism could disarm. Nor was it unnatural, 
for the conduct of the clergy in New York and New 
Jersey had been most offensive. Mr. Seabury by his 
own showing was a guide to Sir Henry Clinton in 1776, 
and Odell, a refugee from New York, was a regular 
contributor of clever ribaldry to Kingston^ Eoyal 
Gazette. He (Odell) appears to have been a medium of 
communication between Gustavus (Arnold) and John 
Anderson (Andre) in 1780." 

SEABURY THE SUBJECT OF POLITICAL SATIRE. 

We have further evidence of the feeling with which 
Seabury and other Tory rectors were regarded, in 
"Trumbull's McFingal," a patriotic satire largely 
directed against the Episcopal clergy. 

" Have not our Oooper and our Seabm-y 
Sung hymns like Barak and old Deborah, 
Proved all intrigues to set you free, 
Rebellion 'gainst the powers that be ; 
Brought over many a Scripture text, 
That used to wink at rebel sects. 
Coaxed wayward ones to favor regents, 
And paraphrased them to obedience." 



NOTES. 93 

RESULTS JUSTIFY THE OPPOSITION OF BISHOP 
PROVOOST. 

The active and persistent partisanship of Bishop 
Seabury in behalf of King and Parliament, and the 
"enmity" felt towards him especially, for his notorious 
antagonism to Congress, certainly justifies the deter- 
mined efforts which Provoost, Jay and Duane made to 
save the infant Church from connection with this 
offensive Loyalist. They foresaw the disastrous effects 
which would necessarily result from the predominating 
influence of this energetic divine, now advanced to the 
Episcopate. They knew full well that at the South, 
where their Church was the strongest in numbers, and 
intensely patriotic, such a union would be generally 
and indignantly resisted. The sad result followed. 

Though at the first Convention, after the Seabury acces- 
sion, there were eighty clergymen in Virginia and the 
Carolinas, there were but seventy-seven in New Eng- 
land, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania com- 
bined. In twenty years from this time, there was not 
one Protestant Episcopal candidate for orders, the 
Church at large was in a confessed decline, w r hile at the 
South it was little more than a name. Such were the 
natural results of the failure of the wise and patriotic 
efforts of Provoost, Jay, Duane, and others to preserve 
the Constitution and Prayer Book of 1785; such the 
legitimate and disastrous consequences of the triumph 
of Seabury and his friends. 

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF BISHOP SEABURY 'S ELECTION 
OBJECTIONABLE. 

Ten ministers, stipendiaries of an English Society, 
who had shut their churches up during the war, and 
thus deprived the people of all opportunity of Liturgical 
worship in the use of the Episcopal Service, met in 
Woodbury, March 1783, and requested Dr. Seabury to 
go to England, and be consecrated a Bishop, for a land 
with which they had no civil connection, for we do not 
learn that they had taken a new oath of allegiance; they 
were still British subjects. Beardsley in Hist, of Ch. of 
Connecticut, Vol. I. p. 346, says : " They went into no 
formal election of a Bishop as takes place in these 
days." 



94 NOTES. 

A DEED DONE IN A CORNER. 

Moreover, the deed was done with the utmost secrecy. 
It "was kept a profound secret even from their most 
intimate friends of the laity." p. 347. None of the 
twenty thousand laymen of Connecticut knew that 
these ten clergymen, who had been neglecting their 
spiritual interests for seven years by depriving them of 
Public Service, had officiously and unwarrantedly un- 
dertaken to select a spiritual governor to rule over 
them. The motive that prompted this presumptuous 
act was " that the Church of God might not have be- 
come extinct here." If the ministers of the Congrega- 
tional Church had closed their churches, as these had 
done, this danger might certainly have existed. The 
clergy not being allowed to pray publicly for an earthly 
King, the people were not by them permitted to pray 
publicly to the King of Kings. 

The International Review, July, 1881, p. 319, states: 
" The approval of some clergymen in New York, and 
of Carlton, the British Governor and General, still 
there, was procured under the same secrecy." This 
whole act of these Connecticut clergy in surreptitiously 
procuring a Bishop for America, singularly enough, 
was British and Tory throughout. It had not, how- 
ever, the stamp of British honesty. Strangly .enough, 
as the same Review states : " Only about a year after- 
ward, in Ma^, 1774, at a meeting of Episcopal clergy 
and laymen from New York, Pennsylvania, and New 
Jersey, held at New Brunswick, did the secret of the 
Connecticut movement come to the knowledge of their 
brethren." Nor is it strange that Dr. Smith, one of 
these clergymen, wrote to the Scottish Bishops, that 
Dr. Seabury was chosen "at the instigation of a few 
clergymen that remain * * *. See, if you value you own 
peace and advantage as a Christian Society, that your 
Bishops meddle not with this consecration." If the 
Scottish Bishops had heeded this advice, the Church in 
America might have been preserved from an irremedi- 
able disaster. See Hawks' & Perry's Reprint of Journal 
Gen. Conventions. 

Seabury was utterly unsuccessful in his application 
to the English Bishops for consecration. The Inter- 
national Review, p. 321, states that: "Finding the 
Prelates so divided in opinion about his request, Sea- 



NOTES. m 

! bury was forced to continue the secrecy of his scheme 
in England, lest the dissenters might be tempted to 
,ask our authorities in America to oppose it." 

Secrecy was stamped upon the undertaking from its 
'first contrivance, to its final success. It hardly has a 
parallel in history. "He that doeth Truth cometh to 
the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that 
they are wrought in God." 

THE VALIDITY OF SEABURY'S ELECTION DOUBTFUL. 

The validity of Seabury's appointment to the Episco- 
pate may be very justly questioned. There was no 
election by the people such as was required in the 
Primitive Church. Mosheim, a standard historian, 
states: "To them (the multitude or people) belonged 
the appointment of the bishops or presbyters, as well as 
of the inferior ministers * * *. Nothing whatever, of 
any moment, could be determined or carried into effect 
without their knowledge or concurrence." De Rebus 
Cristianor., Bk. 1, §45. But Seabury was elected 
without the knowledge or concurrence of an American 
layman, and by a few clergymen who were not citizens 
of the country for which he was designated. His elec- 
tion being thus unauthorized, and vitiated ab initio, 
could any succeeding consecration remove the bar 
sinister ? For consecration is merely a public acknowl- 
edgement or confirmation of an office obtained through 
election. The mind of the Spirit is known in the vote 
of a praying people. No election of a bishop not fair 
or honest, can be held to be valid, unless we believe that 
heaven smiles on craft or cunning. Too many Episcopal 
elections have been vitiated by intrigue and stratagem. 

We are not, therefore, suprised to learn that, "the 
prelates were sensitive also about making a strolling or 
mendicant bishop without a sustaining See. A year's 
patient and earnest effort in London, at his own charges, 
did not one whit advance Seabury's wishes. When one 
prelate was to a degree conciliated another would start 
an objection. Perhaps all of them became a little 
weary of Seabury's presence and persistency." Inter. 
Kev. p. 322. 

seabury's application to the scotch church. 

The application to the Scotch Non-juring Bishops 
was strikingly appropriate to the circumstances under 



96 NOTES. 

which Seabury had been sent. " This was a discredited 
and disfranchised succession from the prelacy of the- 
old Scotch Church, who at the Revolution would not 
forswear themselves to the Stuart dynasty by swearing 
allegiance to their royal substitutes. There were at the 
time of Seabury 's errand four bishops of this sort, with 
forty-two clergy under them. They were under tha 
ban, and in ill odor in England, and disesteemed by 
their brother prelates. By an Act of George II., a 
penalty of six months' imprisonment with final trans- 
portation was denounced upon any members of the 
Communion, more than five, who should meet for wor- 
ship, and this could only be in a private dwelling. 
They were forbidden to officiate at all in England." 
Inter. Rev. p. 322. 

Here certainly was a remarkably appropriate resort 
for one thus clandestinely elected. Seabury had found 
at last suitable consecrators. He was consecrated 
on condition, that the Connecticut Clergy "when in 
Scotland should not hold Communion in sacred offices 
with those persons, who, under pretense of ordination 
by an English or Irish bishop, do or shall take upon 
themselves to officiate in any part of the National 
Church of Scotland, and whom the Scottish bishops 
cannot help looking upon as schismatical intruders, 
etc. " This condition could not have displeased Seabury, 
as he looked upon all Non-Episcopal clergymen as schis- 
matical intruders into the sacred office, and this is also the 
avowed opinion of his American disciples. The line of 
secrecy was also carried out with respect to the conse- 
cration sermon, which was published without the name 
of the preacher, or of the place where the act was per- 
formed. 

HIS CONSECRATION NOT RECOGNIZED IN ENGLAND. 

We are not surprised to leara "His consecration was 
not recognized in London. He was not addressed by 
his title of bishop, nor invited by any of the clergy to- 
preach. To a letter to the secretary of the Society of 
which he had been for thirty-one years a devoted mis- 
sionary, asking about the continuance of his salary, he 
received a letter addressed to the 'Rev. Dr. Seabury,' 
that he was no longer one of its missionaries, its rule 
comprehending only British dependencies. " Inter. Rev. - 



NOTES. 97 

p. 323. Are Bishop Provoost and his friends to be con- 
demned for extending similar treatment to this divine ? 
We have enumerated these plain facts with respect 
to Bishop Seabury; his doctrines, his position and acts 
during the American Revolution; the manner of his 
election and consecration ; (and we have furnished the 
proofs of all our statements), in order to vindicate and 
justify the action of those who earnestly opposed all 
ecclesiastical connection with him; who refused to 
recognize the validity of his election and consecration 
to the Episcopate; and who, on this account, have been 
widely vilified and abused by the admirers and fol~ 
owers of this now much magnified prelate. 

WHY THE FACTS HERE NARRATED ARE NOT GENER. 
ALLY KNOWN. 

The circumstances connected with the early history 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country are 
not widely known, for the reason that the documents 
are not easy of access. Few have written concerning 
these important transactions. Bishop White, who was 
well qualified to describe them, has furnished but scant 
materials. His own reputation for wisdom and con- 
sistency would not be advanced by a minute narration, 
of the early history of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
The best work of Bishop White was the Constitution 
and Prayer Book of 1785 and 86 ; his clearest and ablest 
production was his Tract in 1782, urging the organiza- 
tion of the Church on a Provisional basis ; the noblest 
body of men with whom he co-operated, were the grand 
Revolutionary Statesmen and Soldiers of those Primary 
Conventions. On this pre-eminent period of his life, 
he has not seen fit to dwell. Through want of wisdom 
and consistency, through a marvelous weakness of judg- 
ment and foresight at this critical juncture, he allowed 
a departure from the sound, Protestant, Republican, 
principles of the Primary Conventions. 

There has never been exhibited in all history a more 
remarkable ecclesiastical somerset than the substitution 
of the Seabury Constitution and Prayer Book, for that of 
Jay and Duane, Peters, Page, and Pinckney. To this 
Prayer Book and Constitution, Bishop White and Di\ 
William Smith had given their hearty, public concur- 
rence. They had been foremost in their construction. 
The Preface to the Prayer Book, prepared by Dr. 



fi8 NOTES. 

Smith and thoroughly endorsed by Bishop White, had 
plainly and fully stated that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church had based its Reforms and Reunion on the 
plan and principles of William III. and his bishops, as 
set forth in the Review of 1689. Bishop White writes 
to Dr. Smith, February 10, 1786 : " I express my ap- 
probation of your Preface * * *. I like it both in plan 
.and execution." Dr. Smith writes to Bishop White, 
April 9, 1786: "In the Scot's and Edward YIth 
Eiturgy, the prayer was exceptionable, and leaning 
much to transubstantiation." See Hawks' and Perry's 
Reprint of Journal . Yet these clergy now surrendered to 
Bishop Seabury, who represented the party of James 
II., and while they carefully rejected this prayer from 
the Book of 1785, they allowed it entrance in the Book 
of 1789, where it has remained with other erroneous doc- 
trines thus incorporated, to deface and corrupt the 
Church; to produce sorrow, contention, and alienation, 
and finally ecclesiastical separation, among biethren of 
the same fold. 

Seabury and the New England Clergy notoriously 
represented the Non-juring party of James II.; White, 
Provoost and Griffith, the Reforming Bishops of Wil- 
liam III. The doctrines of the latter are in the Book 
of 1785 and in that of 1874; the doctrines of the former 
in that of 1789, the present Protestant Episcopal Book. 
These two antagonistic principles are again in conflict. 

NON-JURORS, BARRIERS TO REFORM AND FREEDOM 
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

And like as the salutary reforms of the Bishops of 
William III. were rendered nugatory largely on ac- 
count of the dread entertained of the successful machi- 
nations of the Non-Jurors, in case the English Liturgy 
had been changed; so in like manner were White and 
Smith largely influenced in their surrender to Seabury 
by the threat that if he was not received on his own 
terms, Jarvis, of Connecticut, already selected, with 
Parker, of Boston, would be sent to Scotland for Con- 
secration. Thus another and similar schism would result 
by the action of the American Non-Jurors. The fear of 
such consequences triumphed over the demands of con- 
sistency of doctrine and action, of adhesion to their 
principles, enunciated distinctly in the Constitution 
;and Prayer Book of 1785, and by Bishop White most 



NOTES. 99 

forcibly in his carefully prepared Tract on a Provisional 
Episcopacy, published December, 1782. 

THE PREFACE OF 1789 ENDORSES THAT OF 1785. 

The most marvelously inconsistent feature of this 
strange transaction, perhaps, is the declaration in 
the Preface of the Book of 1789, written by Bishop 
White, as follows : u A commission for a Beview was 
issued in the year 1689, but this great and good work 
miscarried at that time." Thus, notwithstanding this 
good Bishop had publicly revised the Book of 1785, 
on the plan of that "great and good work," and then 
abandoned it for the work of its avowed enemies, he 
-and the Protestant Episcopal Church have in the words 
quoted from their authorized Preface, endorsed the 
first Book, that of 1785, and consequently the Book of 
1874, that of the Reformed Episcopal Church. This mem- 
orable display of a want of consistency in doctrine and 
action, this want of fidelity to Scriptural Truth, this 
fear of threats of ecclesiastical division, as were dis- 
played in the reactionary and humiliating measures of 
1789, produced the evil results which constrained 
Bishop Cummins to withdraw from the Protestant 
Episcopal Communion, and to establish the Reformed 
Episcopal Church on the avowed basis of the doctrines 
and principles of the loyal Episcopalians of the American 
Revolution, identical with those of William III. 

INHERENT EVILS IN THE HIGH CHURCH SACERDOTAL 
SYSTEM. 

Devotion to uniformity, to the semblance of unity, a 
hollow union, have ever been the bane of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. The evil is inherent in a system of 
Sacerdotalism, and of exclusive Divine right, with 
mysterious, undefined prerogatives. The possession of 
a more than ordinarily level head, and a heart filled 
with an uncommon degree of humility and love, are 
required to make an Episcopate a success under the 
Protestant Episcopal Regimen. Hence the frequent 
failures even among those who have excelled as Pres- 
byters. And this evil is often aggravated by the party 
spirit and selfish schemes which accompany Episcopal 
elections, when men are chosen not for superior modera- 
tion, learning and sanctity, but for devotion to particular 
party measures, and to some powerful ecclesiastical 



NOTES. 

clique. But the Episcopal system of that Communion is: 
not that of Scripture nor of the Primitive Church. Hence 
its comparative failure, and its loss of spiritual power 
and influence. 

A GRAND OPPORTUNITY NEEDLESSLY LOST. 

If the Protestant Episcopal Church had been wisely 
permitted to remain on the Protestant, Free, Revolu- 
tionary basis, as primarily arranged by its grand 
founders, there was nothing to prevent its becoming ; 
with a thoroughly purified Liturgy, and a reduced and 
safely modified Episcopacy, and such a band of pre- 
eminent laymen, Christian statesmen and heroes; 
Washington and Jay, Duane and Rutherford, the 
Morris's and the Livingstons; Duer, Willett and King, 
Peters and Shippen, the Lees, the Nicholases, the Nel- 
sons, the Marshalls and the Randolphs; Page and 
Griffm, Pinckney andRutledge; with clergymen like 
Provoost and White, William and Robert Smith, 
Wharton and Pettigrew, Griffith and Madison; the 
foremost ecclesiastical power in the land. It lost its 
opportunity, and with that opportunity its crown. 
This the Methodist Communion has taken, by the su- 
perlative wisdom of its leaders, its devotion to a pure, 
and living Gospel, its Christian energy and patriotism. 
The poor and despised sect, without prestige, without 
wealth, without men of Revolutionary renown, but 
blessed of God for fidelity to truth and principle and 
country, has become the first in the land. Its older, 
more powerful, more famous and more arrogant sister 
has taken the position of seventh among the Churches. 
Tradition substituted for Scripture, the Letter for the 
Spirit, has brought this to pass. "Not by power, nor 
by might, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." 

THE TRIUMPH OF THE TRUTH APPROACHING. 

The present Era is propitious for the restoration and 
advancement of sound, Scriptural, and timely American 
principles. Centennial celebrations are calling public 
attention to the startling but slightly known facts 
pertaining to the history of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of that memorable period. 

Those who will study with candor and attention the 
subject handled in these notes, will learn that the Re- 
formed Episcopal Church alone can rightfully and, 



XOTES. 101 

legitimately commemorate the work of these Episcopal 
Revolutionary Fathers; for this Church alone has 
inherited their principles, and represents their noble, 
Scriptural undertaking. While the Constitution and 
Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church is in 
direct and irreconcilable antagonism to the published 
principles, and to the grand work of those great Chris- 
tian Statesmen; those of the Reformed Episcopal 
Church are thoroughly identical, being expressly based 
on the Reform and Revision of the Conventions of 
1785 and 1786; made consistent with Scripture; with 
the Primitive Church; with the Reforming work of 
William III.; with the principles of the American 
Revolution. 

We leave this intensely interesting subject in confi- 
dent assurance, that with the growth of Light and 
Scriptural Truth among Episcopalians in this free 
land, there will be an ultimate triumph to the true 
Protestant Episcopacy, as inherited from our venerated 
Christian Fathers of the American Revolution. 

This has been restored and re-affirmed in the Consti- 
tution and Prayer Book of the Reformed Episcopal 
Church. 

The hope of the Martyred Reformers of Edward VI. , 
of the wise and charitable Commissioners of William 
III.; of our patriotic Episcopal Pioneers; of so many 
departed defenders of Evangelical Truth ; will, under 
God, be realized in the sure and stable progress of this 
Primitive, Protestant, Scriptural, American Commu- 
nion. 

«. 

O, Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon 
the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
Christ himself being the head Corner Stone ; Grant us 
so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doc- 
trine, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable 
unto thee ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



102 NOTES. 

P. S.— Since the preparation of these notes an article 
appeared in the Episcopal Becorder, from the pen of 
Rev. Dr. E. D. Neill, the Historian of Minnesota, from 
which a highly interesting extract connected with our 
subject is given. 

" A few years ago there was published for the first 
time, a remarkable letter in the New York Churchman, 
written on November 8, 1788, to Abernethy, one of the 
Bishops of the Scotch Episcopal Church, which is re- 
called at this time. Seabury writes : 

' Bishop White, of Philadelphia, seems disposed to 
an ecclesiastical union, but will take no action or 
leading part to bring it about. He will ask nothing, 
and Bishop Provoost seems so elevated with the honor 
of an English consecration, that he affects to doubt the 
validity of mine. This may oblige me to establish the 
Scotch Succession from the re-organization of Charles 
the Second to what is called the Revolution. How 
this is best to be done, you can judge better than I 
can.' 

" How humiliating to see a minister of Jesus Christ 
laying stress on a tactual and Apostolical Succession 
which after being set apart as a Bishop, he feels at a 
loss to prove." 



REVISION NECESSARY. OPINION OF THE BISHOPS! 



" The Church should not be so bound up, as that upon just and further 
evidence she may not revise that which in any case hath slipped her." 

ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 

"It has never gone well with the Church of Christ since men have been so 
narrow-minded as to mix the controversies of faith with their public forms of 
worship, and have made their Litanies, instead of being offices of devotion to 
God, become tests and censures of the opinions of their brethren." 

ARCHBISHOP WAKE. 

" Nothing was anciently more usual with the Churches of God, than, when 
times required it, to change the laws made by themselves, to abrogate old ones 
and substitute others." BISHOx* BEVERIDGE. 

w - While the internal decency and solemnity of worship is secured, no wise 
and good man will think much to change a changeable ceremony. And let us 
heartily pray to God that there may be this good and peaceable disposition of 
mind in all towards a happy union.'' BISHOP SHERLOCK. 

•• Surely his religion is in vain who would abandon the substance for want of 
the ceremonies. Surely he hath a very ignorant mind, who hath not learnt 
that obedience is better than sacrifice and whole burnt offerings; and surely a 
very uncharitable mind, that would not leave ninety and nine unnecessary 
ceremonies, to bring one sinful strayed sheep into the congregation." 

BISHOP CROFT. 

" I wish something were done to convince the world that the clergy of the 
Church are not averse to a reformation of some parts of her public service, 
since otherwise they may give offence by their obstinacy and seeming infalli- 
bility, and if a storm should arise, may run a risk of having the tree torn up by 
the roots, which they might have saved by a little pruning." 

BISHOP CLAYTON. 

•• The Church of England, both in the preface to the Book of Common 
Prayer, and in the Articles of her Confession, and in certain passages in the 
Homilies, occasionally hath, in as plain and express terms as can be desired,. 
declared to the world that any of her orders and constitutions maybe retained,, 
abolished or altered from time to time, and at all times, as the governors for 
the time being shall judge to serve best unto edification." 

BISHOP SANDERSON. 

" The prejudices in these Eastern States against forms of prayer, and the 
objections so generally made to some parts of ours particularly, and to the 
length of our morning service, are powerful obstacles to our increase. . . 
When there shall have been a judicious revision of our liturgy, in the manner 
wisely recommended by our venerable brother, Bishop White, deceased, I 
doubt not but our churches will more rapidly increase." 

BISHOP GRLSWOLD. 



fl 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



111 

029 819 525 2 



''One in heart, in Spirit, and in faith with our fathers, who 
at the very beginning of the existence of this nation .sought to 
mold and fashion the ecclesiastical Polity which they had .in- 
herited from the Reformed Church of England, by a judicious 
and thorough revision of the Book of Common Prayer, w- 
return to their position and claim to be the old and true Pro- 
testant Episcopalians of the days immediately succeding the 
American Revolution. And through these, our ancestors, we 
claim an unbroken historical connection through the Church 
of England, witii the Church of Christ, from the earliest Chris- 
tian era." . 

B'sh'jp Cummins' Address at the First General Cov . 
of the lie/armed Episcopal Church. 



